I have been itching to add some gauges to the car to bring it back to it's original Day 2 look. (This car has been Day 2 since before Day 1.
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I added the 1970 Mopar tach a few months ago and now I finally found the right gauges. I wanted the original 2-1/16" black face/white needle, Stewart Warners but it was hard to locate the right temp gauge.
All of the current SW mechanical temp gauges have 2 problems:
1) they go to 265 or 280 degrees, which is crazy hot and a waste of half the gauge.
2) they have the capillary tube with the giant nut that has to go through an equally giant hole in the firewall. Not gonna drill. No way!
Searching the catalogs I found that the electrical temp gauges SW makes go to 240 degrees, like the old days and use a small temp sender and some 16 gauge wire to connect to the gauge.
I was trying to be as incogneto as possible in my engine bay so I used the block drain plug next to the front freeze plug on the passenger side and screwed the sender and adapter into it. It worked out great. I then used some 16 gauge wire and fed it along the wiring harness through an existing grommet and under the dash.
As for the oil pressure gauge, I used the 100 psi version since my factory gauge is always pegged at 80 psi when the car is running. So now I know how far off my factory electrical gauge is:
When the engine is cold they both read 80 psi. When the engine is warmed up at idle, the dash gauge reads 80 psi and the SW reads 45. When running, the dash reads 80+ and the SW read 65 psi. Gotta love that good accurate factory reading.
I used the secondary oil galley plug on the back of the block next to the factory sending unit to mount the oil line.(Hemi's and all big block Mopars have two plugs back there, thankfully) In order to feed the plastic line through the firewall, I found an existing grommet and heated up a metal pick and then just melted a hole through the grommet and fed the line through it, and on to the gauge. I also hid the line underneath existing harnesses.
Here is the finished product:
I bought the temp gauge off of ebay along with the sender unit (which sells seperately. I paid $40 with shipping which was better than the $42 for the gauge and $20 for the sender that the speed shops wanted. The 100 psi oil pressure gauge was a little harder to find on ebay so I found the cheapest mailorder place around:
www.speedwaymotors.com. The gauge was $35.99 plus shipping. That was about $15 cheaper than most other places. I got the mounting plate from my local Napa store for $9. I even lucked out and was able to use the existing ashtray mounting screw holes for the faceplate. The two holes in the bracket were in the exact same spot as the ashtray.
P.S. Check out the odometer: it looks like I might actually roll over to 17,000 miles tonight! Gee, it's only taken me 21 years to go 5,000 miles. (Bought it at 12,234)