Date:         Sat, 8 Jul 1995 08:02:17 -0700 (PDT)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Alistair Bell <ui775@freenet.victoria.bc.ca>
Subject:      Re: Gauges and stuff



On Fri, 7 Jul 1995, Rick Gordon wrote:

> Well, I broke down and bought gauges for my '80 camper. Now of course I've
> got to figure out the cable routing. So far it looks to me that all the
> cables
> are attached to the frame member, hidden from view by that big metal plate thats
> bolted onto the middle of the van. Is there an easier way or should I just
> bite the bullet and drop this plate?

Wish I had that metal plate (Joel!!). Anyway, what I recently did about
routing auxillary cables up front (was suggested on this list) was to run
some 3/4" black plastic water pipe from the engine compartment to the
front frame beside the spare tire. This way it is really easy to run wires
through the pipe when needed, ie you only have to struggle under the van
once.
Another usefull suggestion from this list was to use serial cable for the
wiring between senders and guages. I used some ethernet wire (bunch o'
twisted pairs) that was easy to feed through the pipe and has given me a
lot of room for expansion, guage-wise.

> 
> Also, any recommendations on mounting the gauges? I've ordered (and not yet
> received) some black plastic panels from Rocky Mt MotorWerks, mainly
> because thats all they had. But I'm not sure yet how I'm going to fasten it
> all together. Clues welcome.

I mounted my guages (volt, oil temp, oil press all VDO cockpit series) in
the vdo "cups" that sit on gimble-like mounts on top of the dash
immediately to the right of the instrument cluster. They don't look too
bad, are very easy to read.

> 
> Boy, I love those wiring instructions that come with VDO gauges too. Only
> took me a little while to figure out that it was telling me to wiring up
> the gauge (light) to the headlamp switch. Blurred picture of a switch I
> guess.

Yeh, pretty low quality printing for a quality guage.
> 
> Rather than a drain plug sensor I bought a dipstick sensor. Does this give
> you a better reading? Or is it simply more of a pain to disconnect when you
> check the
> oil level?
> 
I don't think there is much diff between those two locations. I have a
dipstick sender on my '72, its no bother disconnecting when checking the oil.


Alistair