The Secret Gauge Face Project is now live...

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Those of you who subscribed to the link to the new online magazine “Miata Journal” will have got an email today saying the first edition’s gone live.

http://www.miatajournal.com

It’s a good read, and one of the articles in there is about producing your own custom gauge faces.

I’ve been under an embargo until this published, but as it’s now live - here goes.

 

Fancy some alternative gauge faces? Bored with white Lockwood ones?  Think that the AWD ones are a bit expensive?  You can print and fit your own for nothingwhich look as good if not better than all of these - the Revlimiter.net design, like this:

revlimiter

Subscribers to MIata Journal can download the guide and graphics for these and make their own.  I’ve been running a version of these on my Eunos for the past 3 months, and after a bit of careful experimentation Satyridjon has been running a blue version on his for the past few weeks too.  They rock.  

I’d been looking to change my dials and got talking to the excellent Adam Wolf of revlimiter.net about it.  We got chatting and I ended up agreeing to test out his article and give him some feedback.  The eagle-eyed ones of you will notice that these are for UK and US 140mph clocks only.  I scanned and mailed my old 120 mph Eunos clocks and he was good enough to produce a version for these, too.  This isn’t available on the MJ website but it should be on revlimiter.net or I can mail a copy to anyone interested.

 

You’ll need access to a colour laser printer, some acetate, some 3M spray glue, a sharp knife and a couple of drops of superglue to complete this.  You print and glue an acetate sandwich together to form the dials.

 

Mine (140mph clocks, although these go up to 160mph because, well, it rocks):

ric dials red

Jon’s 120mph blue variant:

jon blue

 

Having had a bit of practice I can now knock off a set of these in an hour, and fit them in about the same time.  It’s pretty damn easy, as all the hard work’s been done for you with the graphics - the amount of effort that went into producing even lighting is unreal.

 

If anyone’s interested in fitting a set to their car then hit me up with any questions…

 

Ric

 

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Very nice,

After seeing your write up here I goggled “MX5 DIY Gauge” and stumbled across revlimiter.net (Only to realise afterwards that you gave the address in this write up. Whistling (Note to self, Must try to pay attention more)).

My brother works for a company that has a huge CNC perspex printer/cutter that they use to manufacture back lit signs so the idea has been on my list of things to try for a while, My original idea was to blag the use of their thermal ribbon printer to print a multi layer image on some thin acetate. Working on the rear of the sheet so I wouldn’t get lumps from the different layers showing through, First I was going to put a solid (Non translucent) black face on, Then the two different translucent coloured passes for the normal and “Red line” areas of the face, Then a clear sealing layer so I don’t scratch it to bu66ery putting it on, Before a final cutting cycle to save me the knife work…

All very good in theory, BUT !

I’ve been told that their ribbon printer doesn’t like over printing and has a habit of lifting bits of the previous layer, The “Thermal” aspect of the printer would probably do horrible things to a thin sheet of acetate, Possibly distorting the acetate or crazing the print layer when it cooled (The printer falls into the “Industrial” category and usually prints 5 to 7mm thick sheets), I’d need one of his work shy staff to translate my image into a vectored drawing (“OK mate, I’ll do that… Right after I go grass you up to your boss”). And lastly, If the boss saw MX5 gauge faces trundling through one of his machines rather than all the backlog of work it should be doing he’d hit the roof. Thinking

So, Your way of doing these looks very interesting.

Scotty B.

(PS, I’ve downloaded them from the “Miata Journal” link but is there any chance of some different back light mask colours? As it came as a PDF file I can’t edit it from red to my preferred yellow.)

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there’s a rapidly expanding thread on MX5nutz that I posted - Mr Revlimiter has just weighed in and given me his blessing to start producing a few of these if people don’t want to assemble their own.

Apologies for plugging another forum, but there’s good info there:

http://www.mx5nutz.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=51540&pid=672630&st=20&#entry672630

I looked into different methods for producing these, but what swung it was realising that the AWD dials you can buy are sandwich construction like this, and also the OEM Mazda ones appear to be the same.  The trick is that your inked layer needs to be properly light opaque - this is surprisingly hard and why Adam’s dials have a front printed layer, a mask layer, and a colour layer to produce the illumination colour.  I did ask a lot of specialist printers if they could do light-opaque printing and drew a blank, I think some of the new huge vacuum deposition printers might work but none wanted to talk to me about it.

Don’t be put off by the DIY nature of this - you can produce something that looks like it came out of a specialist factory using Adam’s instructions - they really do look great.  Best part is if you’ve got access to a colour laser printer then they cost nothing.

If you want any tips/more pics then give me a shout, happy to help. Will be doing a short run of these when I can find some more acetate for the laser printer, too.

 

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Are you still making these faces? I would be interested in buying a set if you are. Have you fitted in some uprated LEDs or are you using the OEM lamps? Also at the bottom of my rev dial I have ABS, Main beams icons, do the design templates have room for those?

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 Hi

Er… www.miatajournal.com doesn’t work {#emotions_dlg.thinking}

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It as finished, which is a shame because it was very good,as for the dials, i think they were more towards the Mk 1 as i see yours is a Mk 2, i’ll give Ric a bell,and ask him to jump in, it was his baby.

M-m

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 Thanks {#emotions_dlg.thumb}

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Hi there!

I think from memory if you open the PDFs up in Photoshop you can change them - this is what I did to do different colours of backlights.  I did red, yellow (for Yeti!) and blue and all looked pretty good.  Combine with LED dash bulbs they look really nice.  The key is getting them nice and opaque so they don’t look patchy at night - use relatively thick card stock for the mask layer.

Unfortunately since I sold my Eunos I’ve not progressed any more of these - Yetidragon got the last lot that I put together and all my spares.

I can probably lay my hands on some of the artwork (either 120 or 140 mph clocks!) if they’re no longer available but I’d suggest hitting up Adam (revlimiter) on clubroadster or via revlimiter.net - I know he’d bought a vinyl cutting machine and had got an improved process.  If you’ve got access to funky CNC stuff then I bet he’d love to see what you can come up with.  He’s a top bloke so I’d suggest dropping him an email.  Mention me and see what he can do for you?

Cheers

Ric

 

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Cheers for the info Ric, I have read much of Adam’s blog so will get in touch with him regarding dials.

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anyone please has a template in km ???

 

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Why does stuff aout bathrooms come up when i type in miatajournal.com?