I just finished fitting an after market water temp gauge in the stock gauge position. Its a bit of fiddly work, but I think worthwhile. The stock gauge is removed and the new one fitted in its place with the hot glue gun. I spent a lot of time reading wiring diagrams and hunting with my multimeter to find that all but one meter wire could connect to the back of the cluster. The only wire thats not in the cluster module is battery positive, which I got from one of the AC pod wires. The stock gauge studs gives you ignition, temp sensor, and ground. You can get the dimmer to work by soldering to the pad of its bulb once removed. See pic; You can use the original sensor wire, just use the engine block as a ground if youre sensor has 2 wires it beats trying to get things thru the firewall. Its a 'smoked' stepper motor unit, with an in-built temperature warning light. The temp warning light comes on at 98C. These units are quite smart, having white and red LEDs inside it flashes and shines in different ways for certain errors such as loss of the sensor circuit, and loss of power. It was $55 ex Hong Kong on ebay. One pain is the Z has 12mm fine thread metric, the sensors are usually 1/8npt. Those thread sizes are different enough to be a real pain. You can buy adapters, I tried to weld up some steel bolts & nuts to DIY it but the sensor is now too heavy so too much lag in the temp reading so I recommend buying an adapter. Speco Australia have them I think. So good to know the actual temp! and a TWD too! An excellent upgrade prior to summer and the fitting of my FMIC.
Dont u love it When the gauges are like this, just warming up, strong vacuum, good oil pressure, revs about 950rpm and dropping as it warms up and best of all... A FULL TANK OF GAS! :biggrin:
Link to cheap gauge Thought id put up the link to the ebay source for the gauge; http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Gauge-52mm-W...Z013QQcategoryZ102561QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem Very nice quality for the price.
Looks great man. I got myself a saber smoked water temp gauge im yet to install.... but damn near 3x the price for what appears an identical unit. Good one
Gauge prices are BS The one I used is a lot like the Drift brand ones I saw in Autobarn, but wow the prices they charge are huge. The unit I used is stepper motor, so does the 'opening procession' as well as being a bit clever it goes red if theres a power-down, and flashes the white backlighting if it looses the sensor signal. Plus the 98C warning light. All for $55 plus about 10 for delivery. Also I found that Speco do a 12mm to 1/8npt adaptor for the sensor, only $8 from Autobarn. So for less than $50 and a few hours work I think very much a worthwhile upgrade.
Looks very nice. However, it could be worth thinking about hooking up a second TWD as a seperate system in case your in-built warning light fails. Sorry, but I'm a little sceptical about the quality of some of the 'value' gear off eBay.
The biggest difference with the Saber one is that it is 60mm rather than 52mm so fits the hole in the dash better....I have just installed one from Amec - massive improvement! :zlove:
I bought 2 gauges of that seller. Got the first one the same week. Second one never arrived. He never marked payment as received or item as posted (he considers it "meaningles"). No record of posting the item and didn't want to refund me til he got his refund from the post office despite the fact he had no record of sending the item to begin with. Charged me $23 to send it via regular post to the same city??? And has the balls to ask $ extra for registered mail. I ended up getting my money back but he's just shonky from my experience. Beware
I used the visor It comes with a pod, of which i used the visor ring which I cut the visor off of to make a bezel. An ok fit not perfect but using hot glue gun so was ok. if i did it again id put black silicon over the top of the hot glue to block any light showing thru the gap.
sometimes it goes that way man ive had trouble selling too, if post goes wrong like wrong address etc it gets real messy for the seller and the buyer. Youve got to remember hes running on tiny margins, you can go pay 4x the price retail if you want 'service'.
How much margin he makes is his choice. He makes up a lot of it by overcharging for p&h. If I'm forking out money for something I do expect some sort of service other than 'It's meaningless' and 'i thought i posted it' after being told it's been posted and have no receipts to prove it. Customer service can make or break your business. He ended up refunding me so I'm not bitter about it. Like I said beware. If you do buy from him just ask for confirmations of received payments and postage. Gauges in question are great. Have warning lights that will grab your attention if they go off.
