M20 Swap Gauges?

[Bobby_Digital]

Hey all you m20 swappers. Using the tranny out of the e30, what do you use for speedo/odo/tach? Can you use a vdo gauge set that mates up?

Thanks!

Rob

[scratchbuilder1-48]

Do you have the trans and engine in the car ? I am fixing to do the same swap. Any issues with trans and the tunnel ? I am ready to drop in the motor and trans for a test fit before cutting anything. please advise

Bernie

[Nick]

In the middle of that dilemma myself, the guys at Groma Fabrication are trying to figure it out as we speak. They were talking about some mechanism that is sold at Summit that can make old style gauges work with newer parts.

[Bobby_Digital]

Haha, my car is over at Groma right now as well. I asked the question here becuase I must be getting the same answer from Ed that you are. I don't know, but it doesn't seem like it should be that tough to use an electric VDO tach or the tach out of an e30, but I'm no electrical engineer. Nick, I'm curous to know what you're doing with your car, shoot me an email sometime rob at hksupplyco dot com.

Happy New Year!

[Nick]

Niiiiiice!!! Which car is yours? the red or the blue?

[Bobby_Digital]

I wish I could say the red one with that sick stroker motor and e30 rear subframe and diff was mine. Mine's the blue one. It's been there for months, but not as long as the red one. I'm anxious to get it back because in the meantime, I have amassed everything to redo the entire interior and mouldings, etc.

[Marty]

Look in the project blog by Mike Kotch for the tranny tunnel mods, if you car was a stick originally you will have to cut the tunnel out all the way from the fire wall to the shifter hole and re fab it, this is a big job, if the car was a auto you can get by with enlarging just the rear of the tunnel, a much smaller job. VDO does make a electric speedo that is only a little larger than the stock one and I think could be made to fit the gauge pod, check www.egauges.com for a pretty good cross section of whats available.

[-=Charley]

for the speedo I used a VDO sender that plugged into a short run of square-drive cable from the 323 tranny.

http://www.egauges.com/vdo_send.asp?Sender=VW_GM_Cable

It should be the same on yours too. For the tach, I used a VDO unit plugged into the tach output from megasquirt I believe. works fine, I just haven't made it to NHS to get my speedo calibrated yet. They can hook you up.. they even recalibrated a fuel level gauge for me. http://www.nhspeedometer.com/

[Bobby_Digital]

Wow, thanks Charley!

[-=Charley]

no sweat! I cant promote those guys enough. they are really nice and knowledgeable.

step 1. go there.

step 2. problems are solved

hehehehe

[Marty]

I thought that the question was based on using a E30 tranny which has no mechanical speedo output, if this is the case the part pictured will not work with out adding a speedo output and if you did that why not use the stock speedo.

[-=Charley]

what a dumbass I am. that part definitely won't work.

[Bobby_Digital]

Kevin at NHSpeedometer is really helpful. I found out that to use the VDO gauges, I'd need to fab a toner wheel onto the CV and use a speed sensor to run the gauge. In the meantime, Ed at Groma found a better option, so I'll let you all know how it looks and works when I get my car!