Hello everyone, I just joined here and by looking at the help provided on here I'm looking forward to being a member. To make a long story short I just purchased a 68 camaro that was supposed to be 95% restored, more like 30% when I received it!! Oh well, looking forward to the challenge. I want to keep the stock look on the dash and replace the the speedo and gas (w/tach) with Autometer. Has anyone done this and did you use the stock metal housing and just cut the hole to fit the new gauges? What did you use for turn signal indicators? Thanks for your time and I'm looking forward to this website!! I will be replacing the wiring with a 18 circuit Painless.

http://www.scaldinghot.com/gaugepage.htm

that is pretty much the defacto way to do it, LEDs for turn signal indicators.

You'll have to buy some spacers that move the gauges back from the housing, I used some aluminum tube spacers from home depot (screw & nut isle) along with some screws, I literally took my whole deal in, gauge carrier and gauge 'pod' and mixed and matched with my own phillips head until it worked lol.

the aluminum spacers I beleive were 1/8" OD by 1/4" Long, not super sure on that, but just look around for what you need, the guys there arent real weary about people opening things to make sure they get what they need.

good luck to ya

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll be cutting the housing tomorrow. What did you use for the cutting?

The Corvan panels look pretty nice and are made for Autometer Gauges
http://www.covansclassic.com

That's a great link that aonghus posted above, but I didn't reuse the metal backing, just minor trimming at the back of the plastic housing was needed. I used a cut-off wheel.

http://hometown.aol.com/picturespic/images/today%20gage.jpg

I didn't have to do any trimming to fit them in my '68. Slid right in and I held them in with the supplied-by-autometer brackets. I also fabbed up a piece to house some guages in the dash.

Ditto the LEDs for turn signals.

If you want to see what it looks like, check it out...
www.geocities.com/boodlefoof/newinterior20 (http://www.geocities.com/boodlefoof/newinterior20)

So I thought that the original GEN light in the gauges was what turned the alternator on, or something like that. So do you have any charging issues or does everything work fine?

the GEN light just indicates whether or not the charging system is working properly. I can't think of any possible way that removing it would cause problems.

if you have a 3 wire alternator, and disconnect that wire, it will not charge. Check Madelectrical.com, it's possible to connect a resister in to power that lead.

Well I finally found the post that I had read something about it. I just dont really understand it.
http://www.camaros.net/cgi-bin/forum/ultimatebb.cgi/topic/10/3580.html?

I am in the process of putting the Autometer gauge in my 68' I am just wondering if the alternator will still work right.

there seems to be some sort of forum glitch... when I click the link you posted it goes to the thread... and then in about one second the screen switches to a different page! Confusing...

I tried cutting and pasting the link, but it says it can't find the post.

Boodlefoof, the guage pod looks familiar....lol. Looks great now that its all together! Nice job!

Hey sixd8rs!

Thanks again for the idea and tips on how to put it together. I'm really happy with how it turned out. You were right... it is one of the first things people comment on when looking at the car. They say "hey, where did you get that..." :D

Thats cool! Glad it worked!

I tried clicking on the link and it worked fine, i dunno. maybe its all the stuff they have changed is screwing it up. I am glad to hear other people have done this and had it work, I swapped in Autometer Phantom gauges, but the car wont be ready to start for a few more weeks to see if everything works right.