I have the complete Nordskog main and center panels
and an auxilliary 8 gauge dashtop panel I made to conform with the vision already blocked by the L88+ hood center!!!
(What can I say...I'm a gauge
freak!)
Mine are also in red, except for a few on the auxilliary panel - which are not all Nordskog - and some are about to be changed out for other gauges. (The twin A/F's are white faced Ultralights - and they now have black faced ones and I have redundant voltage and baby tach which need to become something else such as twin exhaust gas pyrometers or even something mundane like a clock and intake air temp - which I already have here.)
It took me a good 2 1/2 months of hours a day to rebuild all the gauge panels, the vent system, the wiring and the trim. The worst thing about the gauges portion was both building a sensible modular harness system with a few plugs instead of direct hard wiring everything and repairing the numerous cracked old gauge panels. (I used all the posi-lock type connectors and 4 and six pin trailer-type connectors.)
I had no similar problem with my fuel gauge and use the original sender. The only problems I have noticed in the 20-30,000 miles and some year and a half or better since I did this are the bright indicator is flaky and very rarely the whole speedometer gauge display cuts out for a minute. It never loses odometer info or the set for the proper speed ratio setting and I suspect a display only power ground fault.
I now have pretty much Nordskog sensors for all the main functions, including vacuum/boost and fuel pressure. I want to switch to the newer Denso or another brand O2 sensors because they verge on wide band fast read levels of performance for under $100.
I need to take the POS into the latest find the unfindable problem place my engine builder has shuffled me off to tomorrow after recovering from a worn out bronze distributor gear I questioned him using in the first place and then replacing the entire ignition system to MSD 6AL and pro billet distributor. (It runs but terribly.) If I warm it up tonight I'll take a pic and try to figure out how to upload it, but you'll have to promise to not look in the mirror at the torn top I have been too afraid to replace for the 15 months that I've had the new top..
BTW, the nordskog center section was reasonably straight forward installing but not so with the tach/speedo section. It was NOT drop in and I found the way they mounted the boards and displays "iffy". Besides consuming the majority of the 20 odd tubes of epoxy I used in this particular project, I actually had to take a dremel to one of the circuit boards to make it fit in the housing. This is a very unnerving thing to do to a component of a $450 kit, but was straightforward enough once I realized there was no way around it...
That panel is very difficult to remove from a mid C3 like mine and is best done after you totally removed the upper dash instead of trying to wiggle it back and forth. Expect a lot of broken flanges and cracked housings in something 30 years old. Your old lenses will almost certainly be so scratched as to really detract form the appearance of your new glowing gaugery. (Yes "gaugery" is now a word!)
I recommend you have the following before doing it:
Fully detailed wiring diagrams
Plenty of wire in as many colors as possible
Black duct tape for sealing of light sources in the back
Plenty of tubes of good two part epoxy for inevitable repairs
Plenty of electrical connectors
New gauge lenses from a vette parts place
Disposable gloves
Masking tape
All possible good tools - wire strippers, crimpers, cutters, small wrenchs, nutrunners, screwdrivers, dremel, small drill bit for the inevitable broken screw areas you have to epoxy and redrill, etc.
Don't expect the speedo/tach panel to be a one day drop in even if you're lucky. It's hard for me to estimate what portion of that hellish 10 odd weeks was one that but I'm sure it was a good 45-60 hours at a minimum. Note the Nordskog gauges are just the display circuit boards the connections and some dark lense inserts - and very good detailed instructions. They are NOT whole self contained gauges like a standard automotive gauges. You have to reuse your housings.
That's why Dakota Digital will charge you $500 over the cost of the actual gauges to install them in your housings and take two weeks. It's probably worth it. An other option may be to get new housings from a vette supplier so you aren't dealing with all the old broken stuff and the car being down while you do all of it. I wish I had done that.
Even if you don't do a whole modification/repair of all the dash stuff, this is an excellent time to at least check all the wiring and replace the 475,192 ancient and leaking vacuum lines in there. I didn't have much really bad wiring, which is rare, but the vacuum lines and such were dried and broken. (I switched the entire car vacuum system to all metal junctures and the high end silicone vac hose from HoseTechniques (do NOT use the soft-when-warm crap from Autozone!))
This is also a good time to use one of the kits to modify the radio slot to install a modern head unit or get one of the now available newly made consoles that feature that. For the main power and ground I ran two new seperate 10 gauge wires, both with an inline fuse (yes, the ground too - most of this stuff on these cars are not grounded to the frame and they use that in the designs - it's not bad to have a backup failsafe) straight to the main battery connections. You want a good voltage source without noise for voltmeters and other sensitive electronics.
Oh, one last thing - you WANT the red. I tried blue and green like the equal quality Dakota Digital packages and saw the amber. They are nearly invisible in even medium sunlight. The red you can see with 4:00 afternoon sun right on them wearing sunglasses even. I prefer blue too - it just isn't bright enough. Likewise I also very much recommend setting up the dimmer circuit for nighttime use. Full bright red at night is pretty harsh - althought I put an extra switch in there so I could defeat this if I wanted them bright.
After all this - was it worth it? Oh you BETCHA! They look stunning and respond perfectly. Of all the things I've done so far to this thing this has the most impact in the moment to moment driving of the car.
