4 gauge pod

[93ty475]

spent saturday working on a little project i've had in mind for a while...i need four 2 1/16" gauges and really don't like having gauges on my pillar...we used a 2" holesaw to make the mold out of wood...pillar gauges are gaining too much popularity with the uncle bens crowd around here and are on the wrong side of the cab for me anyway...i've decided to go with boost, egt, tranny temp, fuel pressure and the plx wideband gauge...that'll make five where the stereo used to go...keep in mind that in order to do four round ones, the cigarette lighter has to be removed and relocated...we are also installing my stereo in the center console and installing a pac harness from the radio to an infrared eye on the dash to run the stereo primarily by remote except when switching cd's....also relocating the ecm and a few other interior projects...wait till you see what i'm doing with the bottom shelf...finally going to make it useful....my gauge pod is only primered, not painted yet...i'll paint it tonight...i have never worked with fiberglass, but a friend of mine guided me through this and was nice enough to let me use his shop and materials while he worked on other things saturday...i loaded a few pics of the process on morgans site...you can view it by clicking here

 

[MikeRenz]

looks pretty good. I'd like to see a pic w/ all the holes filled up w/ gauges.
:tup:

 

[93ty475]

looks pretty good. I'd like to see a pic w/ all the holes filled up w/ gauges.
:tup:

thanks renz...these were preliminary pics...i'll post pics when i round up some gauges...waiting on pricing and availability...i'm finding that gauges are not cheap at all...the truck will be at that shop for a couple weeks getting an under dash wiring makeover as well as some audio work....hope the dash color isn't hard to match...will be painting the syty gauge bezel as well as we repaired a number of holes it had on its right side....also going to extend the ribbon cable on the romulator so i can hide that as well...

 

[odium]

The gallery is really nice; is there any way to get a writeup on exactly what you used, how you used it, etc. to do this?

Probably more than just me would like to learn how to do something like this (probably not gauge mounts, but similar things).

 

[93ty475]

The gallery is really nice; is there any way to get a writeup on exactly what you used, how you used it, etc. to do this?

Probably more than just me would like to learn how to do something like this (probably not gauge mounts, but similar things).

thanks...i'll do a writeup in this thread and get some photos of the products we used...not as much trouble as you might think...pretty straight forward ....just keep in mind that the more time you take to work on it, the nicer it becomes (like anything worth while)....2:42 am now...just got back home from working on the truck...

 

[VermontTy]

Crafty. :tup:

I'd tossed around the same idea in my head about using the radio area, but was going to look into using an extra glovebox cover as the mounting area; same textured finish, same contour that wraps under the bottom edge, etc. If you didn't use a spare glovebox, I also thought about using part of a dash from a junkyard, how they are pretty much foam, and then the textured vinyl glued to it; sawzall up a dash, try to remove the vinyl from the foam and mount it to something along what you have there. Making it look OEM is the tough part.

 

[93ty475]

well i wired, soldered and installed the gauges tonight...also enclosed the shelf area using abs plastic...so far i mounted two 110 volt outlets, serials for datamaster and romulator, a switch for the WB02, a cigarette lighter where the shelf used to be....romulator is also mounted behind the enclosure....made a mounting setup and releocated the ecm to the glovebox...enlarged the opening in the ecm for ease of piggybacking a stock chip on the moates adapter....and installed and mounted the stereo in the center console....everything was soldered and heat shrinked even all stereo connections ....will have pics later of the shelf and stereo as there is still work to be done before assembling the rest...here are some pics of the completed gauge pod....

 

[bezerk]

wanna sell?

 

[Captain Morgan]

that looks pretty hot man.

I have a similar idea for my Ty, yet slightly different. One of these days im actually gonna have to do it :lol:

keep up the good work :tup:

 

[bezerk]

i took my stock radio out, and filled that spot with some wood, covered with leather, it holds 2 gauges, and a couple of switches.

mounted a normal sized radio where the ashtray goes.
(can take pictures if anybody wants to see them)

your setup looks killer!!

 

[93ty475]

thanks guys...are you doing gauges in that area morgan? now that mine's done, i realized i should have aimed them higher and more towards the driver's line of sight, but they'll work as is...too much of a pain to redo...it's just basic body work (repetitive sanding and filling) after the fiberglass...rene, i'd like to see your setup out of curiosity...this is alot easier than you think...my first attempt at this was with a sheet of abs plastic and a heat gun...the only peice of abs plastic that we had was too thick to conform around the mold i made, so i gave up and went fiberglass...if you can find a thinner sheet, it will work nicely and much less labor intense than the way i did it...just heat the plastic up until it shines, then form it wearing some heavy gloves....below is a pic of my abs prototypes before i gave up and did the fiberglass....my original idea was to make a 3 gauge pod then i decided to remove the cig lighter part and squeezed one more gauge in...and for anyone that ever decides to hide your stereo away, here's a link to the "pac repeater harness" that i used to remotely control a stereo that you mount out of sight...works great.... http://www.tune-town.com/Cars/stuff/pac/irx.htm

 

[MasterBlaster]

..my first attempt at this was with a sheet of abs plastic and a heat gun...the only peice of abs plastic that we had was too thick to conform around the mold i made, so i gave up and went fiberglass...if you can find a thinner sheet, it will work nicely and much less labor intense than the way i did it...just heat the plastic up until it shines, then form it wearing some heavy gloves....below is a pic of my abs prototypes before i gave up and did the fiberglass....

if you get the thin ABS plastic the best way to form it is to rig up some kind of vacuum setup.

You could make the mold, mass produce those suckers and sell them all to us. :rock:

 

[Syborg Twin Turbo]

Very nice set up - I am also looking at doing something similar with my quages.

as alway's thanks for the updates on your ride

 

[93ty475]

..my first attempt at this was with a sheet of abs plastic and a heat gun...the only peice of abs plastic that we had was too thick to conform around the mold i made, so i gave up and went fiberglass...if you can find a thinner sheet, it will work nicely and much less labor intense than the way i did it...just heat the plastic up until it shines, then form it wearing some heavy gloves....below is a pic of my abs prototypes before i gave up and did the fiberglass....

if you get the thin ABS plastic the best way to form it is to rig up some kind of vacuum setup.

You could make the mold, mass produce those suckers and sell them all to us. :rock:

for DIY purposes, the thin abs should be able to be heated up and formed by hand then filled with a 'kitty hair' type filler product...i still made use of the left over thick abs plastic...used it for the stereo mount and shelf enclosure.....i'll post progress pics tomorrow...

 

[93ty475]

Very nice set up - I am also looking at doing something similar with my quages.

as alway's thanks for the updates on your ride

glad you liked it marty...thanks very much for finding this of interest....

 

[93ty475]

the following pics show some of last night and tonight's work...you can see my shelf mod and the stereo relocation....i have not painted the cover yet...i made it out of abs plastic...you can also see where i removed the two outlets and power switch from the power inverter and installed them into the shelf cover...i also extended the inverter's harness to remotely mount the unit out of sight...again, everything was soldered...even managed to squeeze the romulator in there and datamaster cable box...i used thin aluminum angle iron (epoxied) as mounting tabs for the shelf cover....the 110v outlets are not visible from the passenger seat unless you really duck down to find it...maybe i can fit in an electronic boost controller in the near future...there are more photos of the process in this gallery...even a few of the ecm mounting...still more to go but you get the idea...

 

[nallj92]

Re: 4 gauge pod

that setup looks really nice i was planning something similar, i like the idea of the stereo out of sight and the gauges easy to see. the shelf cover is a good idea ill have to see how much time i have to try that myself.

 

[93ty475]

Re: 4 gauge pod

that setup looks really nice i was planning something similar, i like the idea of the stereo out of sight and the gauges easy to see. the shelf cover is a good idea ill have to see how much time i have to try that myself.

hey thanks...sorry, i didn't see your response until now....if you do the stereo out of site, use the PAC harness that i linked above....the stereo remote will control the stereo without opening the console door....the shelf cover was a piece of cake...let me know if you have any questions and i'll try my best....

below is a good how-to link for basic fiberglass construction....the gauge pod i made was my first hands-on fiberglass job...I had big help from a guy that does this all the time though....

http://web.njit.edu/~cas1383/proj/main/