Has anyone made there own custom face for there gauges. I found a site that lets you create a template for custom gauges. I am not sure what I want for a face but I want to spice it up a little. I made a few templates so far. Here is one. I have also started to create my own led display that will be mounted into each instrument. It consists of about 30 small led`s that run off of 4 volts so I need to find a resistor to drop the voltage.

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Joe,

Please post a link to that site . . .

here is a pic of my led aray.

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here is a link. this is just for the template. if you want to make a back light rather than just a diameter light you will need to more than just make a template. it requires making layers to your pattern. i will popst another link later to a site that explains how to make layers. it is actually easy and does not require a lot of skill. the good thing is that the original gauge is not modified in any way other than removing it.

http://www.thehoffmangroup.com/aurora/gallery.php

Here is my first drawing. I can make the face any color. I am not sure what would look the best.

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Its a cool project, how do you plan to print them?


EDIT: Just noticed, that site offers printing.

I might have something silkscreened. For now I will probably just print on paper and see how it looks in the car. I have been looking at some face plates on other porsche such as boxter and the 911 (newer). I might try to take that look and feel and incorporate it into a my gauge. The first one I printed is on photo paper and stuck on .075" thick plastic. Not sure if I like the color though.

Your 30 is off one space.

Yep here is a revise in blue and installed in my unit.

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neat idea....

I do lots of custom gauge faces!
The quad gauges led to tachs, and that led to speedos and now I pretty much do anything. I did the IP/gauges windshield and wheels on the SR392 at SEMA as well.
Most of them are stock looking with custom readouts, but I have done a few wild ones. See my website below for more info.
Mark

What are you using for the face? Is it a silkscreen?

I was using a screen for a while, but each gauge turned out to be a one off, each customer wanted something a little different. Now I use a plastic-printed adhesive backed vinyl overlay that is mounted to the original or a new metal face. The first one I made is still stuck on some plastic out in my backyard, I made it over a year ago.
I also use dry trandsfers for the bezel faces. We have some mock-ups at work that are 10 years old with this technique, and they still look like new. Now I have the flexability to do a multiple color gauge in a single pass, with crispness that surpasses silkscreening. OEMs use pad-printing, not silkscreening to do instrumentation nomenclature, that is much crisper than screening.
To do a screen, you are looking at about $75 per color to create and about $50 to print from just about any screen shop, that is for each seperate gauge. Once you have the screen, you can usually print 1-50 for a lot price of about $50. The piece price is cheap when you are doing 50, but for one, it is costly.
Mark

Here are a couple of gauges in the OEM style

Mark

Here is a silkscreen set, as you can set, as you can see, nice, but not as nice as the vinyl overlay

Mark

Here are the white face prototype vinyl overlay gauges in my car.
They have been in for about a year now.

Mark

Wow Mark, those gauges are awesome!! I would really be interested in getting one of those quad gauges in black for my 914 next year for sure! Excellent work!!

Thats really nice work. My intent is only to have a winter project not to go into business , so for what I want to do it sounds like it could get costly. I think I will just play around with some more ideas but I will probably never use them in my car. Sounds like when I am ready for some new faces I found the right place to go. Great work Mark.