First I would like to thank Kent (76-914) for introducing me to Al's wife Shirlee. She was extremely helpful and sold me all of Al's leftovers. Today, I received a huge box filled with led's, cannibalized gauge housings and a very touching note from Shirlee. I also noticed a dismantled tachometer that Al was working on. I was taken back and felt very sad seeing this tach. You could see all the tedious prep work that Al did, but sadly he wasn't able to complete his masterpiece.

I was determined this afternoon to pick-up where Al had left off, in his honor. This thread is broken up in 3 parts. The first part is intended to show everyone how Al achieved his multicolor gauges. The 2nd part is a "how to" to make your gauges into any color you wish. The last part is another "how to" but taking our gauges to a whole new level. As you will see, my design could have a back light color background in any color that you can think of. My uncle has designed a neat little circuit that works in tandem with the RGB color controller. The circuit senses the tach wire, and changes the color of the back-lighting of all gauges to yellow at a certain rpm, then red at another certain rpm. It is fully customizable as you can set the when yellow comes on, as well as the red. There is another input on this circuit board which turns all the gauges to red when triggered. I thought we could use this special input for the low fuel light, or as a fan belt warning for the 911 types. Perhaps the special input could be hacked into a radar detector, many possibilities. Yellow and redline lights again are fully adjustable via a potentiometers, also this circuit will work for any 4-6-8 cylinder engines.

With my last how-to topic, I received many messages from folks that didn't feel comfortable doing this to their own gauges. I have done enough of these in which I feel comfortable. If you're one of these folks, send me a PM and I'll do this conversion for you. For me, it's a 1.5 hour process, but it may take longer for someone that has never done something like this before. I'll try to make this write up detailed as much as possible.

Here is Al's unfinished gauge, most likely a 75-76 era tachometer
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Keep in mind, this is what we are after
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I applied power to this gauge, and here was the results
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As you can see, this partial led strip is white. I'm not sure what Al was trying to do, but for his signature multicolor gauge, this is the wrong color.
1st step, reinstall the tach faceplate and make pencil marks inside the can at the RPM's you want. I chose 0 to 4.2 to be blue, 4.2 to redline to be white, then redline to around 7 to be red. The pencil line inside the gauge can is helpful with the mock up.

Here is a picture of the style flexible LED strip Al used. I was happy to see that he used the same style side emitting led as I did, but his is not waterproof. I'm not a huge fan with this idea, due to the possibility of something shorting to ground. Our car catches fire readily enough, I hate to add to the list of potential fire starting causes. This is why I use waterproof led flex strips.

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Next, we need to build a continuous strip with different colors. This led strip is made to be cut every 3 led's. This will require you to solder this flexible circuit boards together.

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Be sure to use heat shrink around these soldered connections!

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Now with your strip soldered together, this is a good time to test your creation

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I have spoken my piece about using non waterproof led strips, so this is what I did to fix the problem. Obtain some foamy double sided tape and go ahead and line the inner gauge can. You want this foam tape to be about 1" back from the front of the can. This foam keeps the raw circuit tracks from shorting out to the gauge can. It also has another benefit, it lifts the flex strip from the can about 1/8". This is good, because mounting the flex strip right on the can and being so forward causes stray light to hit your eye or your passenger.

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Al did a nice job creating a new hole and grommet for the wires. This is not a bad thing, as it keeps the wire from chafing.

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Now, just reassemble. Refer to my other topic and pay attention to step 2 if you need guidance.

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not bad

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just as a reference

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Hopefully I didn't do Al any injustice with my amature attempt. RIP Al

Now onto true multicolor gauges! This part explains how to install RGB led's into your gauges, which enables you to choose any color via a push of a button.

Refer to my last topic "gauge lighting" to assist with disassemble with the gauge cans.

Thanks to Garold, he was brave enough to let me experiment on his gauge cluster.
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However, these are in pretty bad shape, but good enough for the proof of concept.

First, remove the gauge bezel ring. Refer to my last topic
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Next, obtain these led's, they are readily available on eBay. (RGB 5050 waterproof SMD flexible LED strips, 60 led per meter)
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These led's are kinda cool, as they have red,green,blue all built into one single led. However, they don't sell them as side emitting like the style we used on the previous builds. Since they are not side emitting, we will need to do more then one loop inside the gauge can. I have found that 2 loops gives plenty of light.

We will need to cut to length and solder on 18" or so of flat rgb cable. Then we need to peel back the silicone waterproofing material to expose the solder pads on the flexible circuit board.
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be sure to use heat shrink over your solder connections!

Now, go ahead and peel the sticky tape and install inside the gauge can. I like them towards the back of the can, to limit stray annoying light.

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So far so good, repeat this for the remainder of your gauges.

Go ahead and test these lights before putting the gauge back together.
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Let us now turn our attention to the controller. I have found a good cheap Chinese RGB controller that will work with our car. Readily available on eBay for 10 bucks, and the best part, it has memory. It would really suck to turn on the headlight switch and have your gauges go into some disco mode! You pick the color that you like best, and it retains that same color the next time you pull the headlight switch. Here's the controller:
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Here is a small sample of colors you can choose from. The pictures don't do these any justice, they look awesome in person. You can make any color, if you don't like any of the presets, you can manually adjust the red, blue and green to find the color you like best. They even have pink for the unicorn lovers

Set the color, and throw the remote into the glovebox and forget about it.
For the purist, I think this color matches are original incandescent lamps.
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Totally up to you. Now if you are happy with this, you can call it quits here. The next step is modifying the RGB controller to sense the tachometer pulses and change the background color to yellow or red at certain rpms. This mod if my most favorite part, and I'm quite excited about it. As mentioned before, there will be a special input for low fuel that turn the gauges red when you are low on fuel. Question is, how many of you guys are interested in this idea? I need to know how many circuit boards to make.

Here is the board artwork for the circuitboard which sets the color to yellow at a set speed and red at another set speed. Also red when the tank empty sensor is engauged.

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Nice job

This part II thread should also be in the Classics forum!

Thanks

Wow. I guess to be an electronics whiz you need to have really good eyesight, huh? And soldering skills. Very cool. Really like the results. If I could see better I'd be tempted to try that myself.

No eyesight needed, I'm trying to make this as a kit for everyone. This should install into our car without the need of cutting any wires and under one hour. I will also perform this work to your gauge cluster as a service. I just need to know if you guys are interested with this. I need to place an order soon for these circuit boards to be made. It changes the price on my end for ordering one board versus 100 boards.

Here is the RGB controller box with its board pulled out slightly. The LED Overspeed Control Module will mount inside of this RGB controller box, so no extra wiring or connectors or boxes. There will be two holes added for the speed setting adjustments and two wires though a grommet hole for the tach and tank connections.

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Tim, this is cool as Fuchs man. Al would be proud and I think you've got a great thing going. Keep up the great work dude.

Thanks man, how many can I put you down for?

Simply amazing! A cool simple add on to the 40 year old car.

I'm a +1 for a programed board and a kit. I've already bought the basic white light, but the idea to change the color is simple. AND I like the tach and empty tank lighting idea. Can we do one more circuit for an 'overweight' warning on the passenger seat?

Thanks!

Unfortunately my gauges are all non-stock or I'd be in this for two. Damn.

Here's what inspired my thinking.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2K2c3QQgSA


Pretty close to my design, minus the music. However my design first changes to yellow then to red. Also my design changes the color of all the gauges instead the videos one gauge

It should be noted that the yellow light before redline is optional. It can be adjusted so that you can just have red at the redline rpms. We tried to design this circuit board to pacify anyone.

I'm interested....

I'd be in for a set.

SirAndy, you do so much for this site. I would be happy to donate one to you for free

I'm in for one. thanks, mark

BTW, this is really awesome.

Thx Buddy, Al has got to be smiling. He loved doing this and now you have improved upon a valuable service to our community. Very nice work.

That or he's gonna come haunt me for giving up all of his trade secrets!

Those look very, very good. Great workmanship

Ok, I have been going over prices for this. As of right now, I can put a kit together for 95 dollars (all 3 gauges). If you want me to do the labor part, I will charge 100 dollars to install. I will honor this price for the first 10 customers, just to protect me from losing my ass if it goes that way! Again, it's somewhat hard to pinpoint a final cost due to cost of components and assembly. Most everything on the circuit board are SMT (surface mount) components, which is a PITA to solder by hand. So I will need to invest in a infrared reflow oven to help streamline assembly or outsource to a company that does this.

I believe in this as it has a cool factor to it. It also solves the original problem of our gauges being too dim. Kinda a win-win, and cheap (for the first 10 customers)!

I'm in for this!!!!!!!!!!! (you doing the install)
Sean

I'm in for a kit and your labor service!

I'm in for an installed kit.

I'm in for the kit & your install services

Thanks

David

I'm in for a kit! This should work with my gauges I believe, which are standard except the tach is appropriate for a /6.

Tangent: got two oil gauges and volt gauge separated out. They're brighter (well, except oil temp) than the ones on the main dash so they're not too bad, but I'd like to brighten up the oil temp seeing as it's sort of important. Think I might try to salvage lights from the other gauges.

Great! This circuit is very diverse as it was designed for our 4 cylinder or 6 or even a 8 cylinder engines. In addition, this will work with the older 200 volt tach signal, 80's style 12 volt tach signal and the the modern 5 volt tach signal. So, I think we have all cars covered with this design.

The 'do it yourself' kit....are all the pieces soldered or is that part 'do it yourself' too?

I'd like to do my own gauges, so I'm interested in having just the kit.

Love the kit. It would be nice to have the new lights and color option, will seem wrong to put into a SIX, but it's mine and I'll do with it what I want. I'm debating the changing of the lights to warn of high rpm's just because I wouldn't want to see it change often if I am reving the motor. I'm holding off my decision on that one. The low gas light....would it be able to change then entire color AND light the low light warning? or will the low gas light not operate with this change?

It would be mighty cruel of me to give you a board with a bag full of parts. These parts are miniature components that will need to be soldered with great accuracy. It was my intention to assemble the board and sell it as a working controller. You would be responsible for calibrating the circuit, so you'll need a function generator or adjust the pots with the engine running. There is some cool free apps for your phone that may work as a function generator.

For the purist, my mod to the gauges will not require any cutting into the cars wiring harness. This will be a pretty clean install for the most part. We still need to figure out where to mount the controller, but there seems to plenty of room under the dash behind the gauges.

I should be clearer. If you want the kit and for me to do the labor, I will do the calibration for you. When this gets rolling, all that I need is your gauges and what RPMs you wish the lights to turn on and off at. When I mail your gauges back to you, all you need to worry about is just reinstalling back into the car.

Count me in for a kit. Does it include the LED strips or do we need to source those elsewhere?

Yep, the DIY kit will have enough led strip to do the 3 gauges and the flat ribbon cable needed to solder to the led strips.

Some progress today, the circuit boards have arrived!

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Our new board was designed to sit ontop the Chinese RGB controller circuit board and fit within the aluminum housing
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The wires will all be internal, except for the tank empty wire and tach, this will make for a very clean install
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The business end. This is where you can adjust the RPM yellow or red indication lights or turn them off. The rotary switch is for 4, 6, 8 or 12 cylinder engines.
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Exciting stuff, within a few days I'll have the first circuit all soldered up When this is done and the proof of concept does indeed work, I'll post a video of these gauges in action.

Do you have a time turn around on your work on a set of gauges?

I figure you will be busy during the winter months (no one driving 914's); however, if turn around is about a week. I'm thinking your experience and knowledge would be highly beneficial.

Turn around time will be one day. I'd hate to keep any 914 from being able to drive during this beautiful weather.

Put me down for one set including your labor. Can you repaint the needles while you have the gauges opened up?

Yep, I was planning on doing that anyways, except for the guy who had the original 914-6 gauges.

Put me down for a kit. DIY, Let me know when you want the paypal, check, whatever. thanks, mark

Got the prototype circuit board soldered up today. So far so good, it functions as designed on paper. Hopefully I will have this installed in my 914 tomorrow!
I think when I get everything situated, I'll accept paypal to help streamline the whole process.
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I have the redline red light to activate around 5500 rpm. What is a good rpm for the yellow light to come on?

What's a good shift point? Mom's 64 Lemans had a moveable yellow pointer on the tach that she set at the "best" shift point.