Installing KARR's New Gauges

I wanted to give KARR's instrument panel a little more of a Knight Rider look, so for my birthday this year Sara bought me a set of digital Fiero gauges from Tom's Digital Electronics. Thanks Baby, you are the absolute best! We had them custom built to look a bit more like the bar graphs seen on Knight Rider. They took six weeks to build, but they arrived a few days ago and I couldn't wait to get them installed. As you can see, KARR was just waiting to pull into the garage too!

Here are the current stock Fiero GT gauges.

This is everything included in the Fiero GT digital gauge kit.

The volt meter and oil pressure gauges.

The tachometer.

The water temperature and fuel gauges.

The speedometer.

One last look at the stock gauges before tearing them apart.

I started with the volt meter and oil pressure gauge pod.

Comparing the analog versus digital. 

I had to remove the stock connector and hard wire the new digital gauges in.

On to the main gauges...

With the main gauge pod removed, I just had to remove the plastic lens and metal fascia to access the stock gauges.

For those of you who have never had the gauge pod apart, the back of the metal fascia is painted orange. This is actually what makes the gauges appear to be lit by orange bulbs. It is just the light reflecting off this panel as it illuminates the gauges.

Comparing the digital and stock analog tachometer.

Comparing the digital and stock analog water temperature and fuel gauges.

Comparing the digital and stock analog speedometer.

Here is the back side of the main gauge pod. I removed the six bulbs that were used to illuminate the analog gauges.

Installing the digital gauges in the pod.

With the gauges installed, I reassembled the pod.

I mounted the gauge pod back into the dash.

The tachometer, water temperature, and fuel gauges all use the stock connectors so there was nothing to wire. The speedometer wires needed to be spliced into the existing speedometer connector which was still needed to power the odometer.

Powering everything up for a test.

After installing the black outs, if they are in direct light, you are just able to see the circuit boards peeking out. I love that look!

When they are not in direct light, they are totally blacked out.

Digital glory! What a transformation!

I am thrilled with the digital gauges! I will be doing a video showing the before and after with the gauges working shortly after this post, so be sure to watch for it.