Temperature-gauge, Rev-counter and Indicator lights

edit 13-10-2007: Because of the CPU not giving a standard rev-counter signal, this standard VDO rev-counter didn’t work. I now had two choices:

 

  • buy a rev-counter that can be switched to two cylinders. Because this engine has wasted sparc ignition each coil fires two times per cycle, instead of four times with a single coil ignition. The two cylinder rev-counter could be wired to one of the coils and it should give a correct reading.
  • use the original rev-counter from the Alfa 33. The problem is, I’d had to creat my own housing for it.

 

Because I couldn’t find a two cylinder rev-counter cheap enough and I allready had the original Alfa 33 cockpit, it decided to use the Alfa rev-counter.

This is the original Alfa cockpit:

When you remove the rev-counter you’ll see that it is nothing more than a dial with a little bit electronics behind it.

I used a piece of sewer pipe (a piece that allows you to go from 110 mm to 80 mm), a clamp of an old drawing board, two pieces of acrylic glass, some bits of metal and two bolts (it’s beginning to sound like a recipe..):

Now stir it all together….. uhm…no… 🙂

I used two bits of alumium to hold the rev-counter into place, on the top there is a piece of iron that connects the rev-counter housing to the clamp. The clamp will be used to attach it to the underside of the dashboard:

As you can see I allready painted it flat-black. And I added three LED’s to make the rev-counter light up.
The connections points are: silver screw top left: + for the LEDS, copper nut top right: + for the rev-counter, middle copper nut on the right: signal from the CPU, copper nut right bottom: earth for rev-counter and LED’s.

And this is what it looks like in the car:

Under the dashboard was the only place there was room for this rev-counter. But I can see it very good through my steering wheel:

In this picture you can also see that I move the temp gauge to the right and place a voltage gauge in the old place of the temp gauge. This particular voltage gauge isn’t working very good, by the way. It gives a way too low reading.

The rev-counter works perfectly, I now discovered I am “only” at 4000 rpm at 80 km/h in third gear! So doing 90 km/h in third gear is not a real problem, the engine should be able to do 6000 rpm max.

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