dicky96

Cheers So them indiglo thingies are they like an EL panel? They must get illumination from somewhere LEDs still recommended then groover (needle at least)?

Those look nice... in a minimalistic and slightly retro way.... imho. How difficult is it to fit the reverse indiglo guages, assuming the dash is coming out anyway to change the bulbs to LEDs Also I should probably start a new thread really but does anyone one know if these are any good? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/White-Steering-Wheel-NISSAN-Skyline-300zx-200sx-100NX-/110696369745?pt=UK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM&hash=item19c6048e51 I am having the car retrimmed in white and black leather around the end of the month so looking for a white/black leather or leather look steering wheel to go with it I have a momo wheel at the moment but it does not fit in with the rest of the car

Hi AS I am gonna be removing the dashboard guages soon to fit backlight LEDs I was wondering if anyone has fitted these http://www.zcentre.co.uk/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.pbv.tpl&product_id=172&category_id=73&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=7 in red/white Are they basically just plastic transparent stickers that fit to the standard dial guage, and illuminated by the backlighting ? I prefer the look to the iridium ones http://www.zcentre.co.uk/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.pbv.tpl&product_id=484&Itemid=7 though thats just my opinion And also they are a lot cheaper I personally think the original dash guages look a bit old fashioned now Rich

Cheers I ordered some this morning already from the ebay link rolandas posted

cheers guys

I've been around a couple of local shops trying to get some wheel studs and they are saying I gotta go to the main nissan dealer as they don't have any with a fine enough thread Is that correct as I'm worried Nissan may try to charge a little over the top for some wheel studs - I was thinking of changing all the ones on the front while I am at it seeing as a few have worn threads (though the nuts fit OK) Also I want to paint the front calipers (Red) while I got it all apart, do I need some sort of special paint as they get warm? cheers

Yep my circuit does exactly what that DRL controller does

That would be interesting as I can't see anyway to dim my guages without affecting the operation, as the power to the guage and power to the LEDs is the same connection. Without opening up the guages and modifying them that is But if it saves me the effort of trying to get the guages apart without trashing them, then thats a bonus

Seeing as I got the zed looking something like I wanted, I'm looking forward this coming year to bringing her down to a few shows and hopefully meeting some of you guys I really hope to get the interior up to spec before then but anyways...... Where does the club get to to for the major shows. I'm new to the show scene so sorry if its a dumb questions I know we have a big one day show at Trentham Gardens in Stoke On Trent every June and heard that the last year or two there was little or no prescence of Zeds which seems a bit of a shame. As I live about 3 miles from there I fancied taking the car down this coming year, does anyone else go there? And where else is popular? dicky

When I did my City & Guilds (remember those?) in electronics we had this little nursery rhyme That was 'Acceptable in the 80's' even though we had one or two ethic folks on electronics course, and personally I'm still fine with it, but then of course the PC numpties got involved so it changed to Bill Bloggs Raped Our Young Gladys Behind Violets Garden Wall as a way to emember Black (0) Brown (1) Red (2) Orange (3) Yellow (4) Green (5) Blue (6) Violet(7) Grey (8) White (9) Oh BTW the new dimming guages look great (will put some pics up tomorrow) but they dont work while dimmed and that bugs me. If only i could get into the damn sealed up things - so I need a really mechanical engineer to advise here then it will be perfect dicky

Yes that is what the wiring diagram shows

OK I have some good news It looks like that last lot of sealant fixed the leak!! I have no expertise on this apart from fixing my own problem but I would suggest that if you can raise the rubber away from the metalwork anywhere like I could on the above photos with my thumb, then stick a load of silicone sealant under the whole lot, push it down with your fingers and wipe off the excess (make sure it does not block the targa drain holes) then clamp down the roof and see what happens next time it rains :yes:

I've built it on a very small piece of veroboard I used some components of different values as they are not critical and I just used what I had lying around. In particular I used a 6K8 resistor instead of a 10K one nad also a 0.047uF Capacitor instead of a 0.1uF Here are the photos It's small and narrow enough to glue to the inside of the pods holding the guages Don't mount it by the metal tab on the LM317T - it's connected to 12V !! Fitting -------- Cut the red wire feeding power to the guages. Connect the cut end of the red wire (feeding the power in) to the red wire in my photo below Connect the other cut end of the red wire (feeding the guages) to the orange wire in the photo below Cut the black wire going to the guages. Connect both the cut ends plus the black wire coming from my circuit all together Connect the green wire from my circuit to your side lights +ve Turn on the side lights and adjust the variable resistor for desired dim level Turn the side lights back off and you are back to full brightness The guages probably won't work properly when dimmed (certainly the voltage meter does not) but at least you are no longer dazzled by night Rich

Hmm OK the problem I have is I can't see anyway to get these guages apart because the front bezel is formed around the outer casing so I can't ge tto the internal wiring and the illumination circuit itself Therefore when you reduce the voltege supply to dim the guage on the red wire it also affects the voltmeter. It probably has some effect on the boost and fuel mix guages though i can't test this without attaching it all to the car which I'll probably try tomorrow Here's the circuit diagram. The LM317T is a variable voltage regulator that is used to power the guages When the sidelights are off the output from the LM317T is set by the two resistors 390r and 3k3. These values have been chosen to allow 12V to be supplied to the meters - threfore they have full brightness When you turn on your sidelights this also supplies voltage to transistor TR1 via the 10k resistor The transistor turns on and connects the variable resistor VR1 to the voltage regulator. This alters the voltage supplied to the guages and so the brightness. You adjust VR1 to set the desired dim level. I used a 10K variable resistor as that is what I had around, but all the voltage adjustment happened towards one end of the resistor being turned, so I would suggest a lower value, say 4k7 You only need to connect to two of the legs on the variable resistor (the middle one plus either of the end ones). The arrow on the symbol for VR1 is the middle leg The transitor could be just about any general purpose NPN transistor. I used a BC337 It only takes a few components to build the circuit and all these parts are available from maplin quite cheaply. I took a photo of the LM317T and BC337 transistor so you can see which leg is which The video shows the circuit in operation Sorry that's the best I can do unless someone can figure out how to dismantle the guages without destroying them dicky

Hey znut are your guages same as mine? I just took them off to have a look - see pic below (obviously guages are upside down in pic) The top one (boost) has red/black/white wires The middle one (fuel mixture) has red/black/grey the bottom one (baterry voltage) has just red/black It seems fairly obvious the red is 12V, black is 0v and the grey/white wires come form the sensors for boost and fuel mixture That means they don't have a separate feed to built in LEDs and dropping the voltage on the red wire may well dim the guages but certainly the Battery Voltage one would read wrong and probably the other two as well I've got the guages on the bench now just having a look what can be done to dim them yet still have teh guages working properly dicky

We got a lull in the rain so I just went back to the Zed to remove the guage pods from the windscreen pillar (to have a look how to dim them re znut's thread) What I noticed was when I took the plastic end cap off the rubber (I have to do this to get the guage pods off) it still had water in it - that's the cap shown in the first pic below I'd suggest anyone who still hasa leak, remove this plastic cap and see if hte water is getting in there It seems to me that water is still getting in from the part of the rubber I am showing lifted up in the other pics. It gets in just to the rear of the part I sealed down as per jeffs thread So I have now tried sealing down all the part I could get my fingers under - let's see what that does

OK heres an update I did reseal as Jeff posted and left the car in the garage best part of 24 hours I now have fixed pretty much all of the water leaking in via the top guage pod However i still have a severe leak on the drivers side! Now I had a look at the targa rubber itself as I think it may be leaking from here Mine does not look very even - I attached a couple of pics Should the rubber be that shape? It looks more even on the passengers side and that side is not leaking now (or hardly at all) My brother in law (who was an RAF engineer) came up with a good suggestion (sounds good to me anyway) which was to wipe the rubbers dry, rub chalk dust over them, then put the targa down and leave the car out in the rain He says any water ingress will be obvious then as it leaves tracks in the dust Don't have any chalk but I'm gonna try talcum powder see if that does the same job Meantime - are these rubbers mis-shapen? dicky

Be careful guys you are powering several LEDs to light three guages so wattage disipated by the resistor is important to consider otherwise it will overheat

Thats what I need to look at groover From when I had my gauges hanging loose while looking for that targa leak I spotted three wires going to the top guage Now i didn't look into it so one could be for illumination and another to send a varying volatege to the guage (to get the needle to move) plus of course ground on the third Or conceivable it could be 12V plus ground and some control signal on the third that the guage monitors to move the needle (electronics built into the guage) From that I guess you can take the answer as 'I don't know'....... yet.... but suspect they have a separate illumination feed which makes life easier

Hey Andy Just to mention the CCFL ones that I bought from you look good now they are on the car :cool3:

hi znut Actually I have this same problem as I have those pillar guages fitted and they are bloody awful when driving at night If you leave it with me over the xmas break I was going to look at the possibility of getting the guages to dim automatically when the side lights are on I also wanted to look into using dual LED illumination to get the guages to change at night to red, for example dicky

When my new alloys were fitted the guys at the tyre shop were complaining bitterly that the thread on three of the bolts (studs?) on the offside front wheel are knackered. With some use of WD40 and winding a wheel nut on and off the studs repeatedly they managed to get four of them fitted OK but the other one is knackered So I only have four nuts on that wheel - they left the locking one off. Now then - do I need to get some replacement studs and then get the hub off and stripped down to fix this or is it easier just to get a second hand hub with five good studs Cheers for the advice as many of you have probably spotted by now I'm no mechanic (unless it's electrical) Rich

Hey thanks phoenix :thumbup1: Actually I am really happy as a pig in muck with the dotz hanzos 19s - I got them lacqured prior to fitting as I wanted a gloss rather than satin finish and that really brings out the best in them IMHO got some Z centre caps coming and also gonna change that yellow DOTZ badge for a black/wht 300ZX one i think What I really like about these wheels is the spokes form a kinda Z shape Also thanks to all the other nice comments on this thread - it was a lot of work and that makes it more worth while that some of you guys like it - and the advice on body kit I got here was really useful. Yeah I know it's my car/choice/taste but it has been so good to get some other opinions along the way on bits I was uncertain about cheers guys Rich

agl89 you got a PM m8 re the old wheels :wink:

Well It's done and resealed so fingers crossed for tomorrow Certainly the correct seals were not there and it was worse on the side which was leaking the most - so hopefully it will be fixed cheers