Gauges in the Glovebox

Posted On: September 8, 2010 Posted by: admin

In keeping with the standard look as much as possible, I opted to hide the gauges inside the glovebox. This was a relatively simple thing to do and i’m really happy with the results.

There was no real plan on how the gauges would be held in place, all I knew when making the first cuts was that the gauges were going to have to be on a slight angle towards the drivers seat and the dimensions of the glovebox, so slotted holes were to be cut for each gauge.

Beautiful symmetrical holes, I know! But that doesn’t matter, as long as the spacing of each is bang on and the gauges can all be tilted to the same angle. The rest can be filled in with liquid nails and builders bog!

PVC pipe with an inner diameter of ~62mm was selected to be used to house each gauge. Now the gauges themself are ~65mm in diameter so to make up for the short fall, the pipe was cut down one side and an off cut of ~10mm was used to increase the diameter of the pipe. This gave a nice snug fit for the gauges.The off cut wasn’t glued to the pipe at this stage.

The most time consuming part of the whole process would have to be the gluing of the pvc pipe into each hole. Liquid nails was used to hold the pvc pipe in place. Once the glue dried I used some superglue on the inside of each piece of pipe to give a little more strength to the 10mm spacer.

A little builders bog was applied around where the pipe meets the timber, only a very thin coat. That was then rubbed back with 180grit sand paper and a couple more coats of the builders bog were used to get out the larger imperfections found after sanding. After that the primer filler was applied fairly generously 3 times, each time it was rubbed back with some 320grit paper.

Once the primer filler had eaten up the rest of the imperfections about 5 or 6 coats of gloss black was applied.

Last part to be modified on the glovebox was the glovebox insert itself. The back was cut off to allow access to the wiring of each gauge, using a handsaw and some patience it was a fairly easy job. This was done so that the wiring and globes on the gauges are accessible without having to pull the whole thing apart again.!

The finished product! This would have been one of the more simple mods done so far and whilst it was a little time consuming, it was definitely worth it. It looks like a bought one aside from the insects that always feel the need to commit suicide when they see wet paint.

Materials Required :

• Builders bog - anytype of filler that you can shape really
• Liquid Nails
• Primer Filler
• Gloss Black
• PVC pipe (62mm inner diameter) ~200 to 300mm

Tools Required :

• Circular saw / handsaw
• Jigsaw
• Drill with bit large enough to fit the
• Sand paper - 180grit and 320grit
• Stanley knife

Time :

~ 4 - 5 hours broken up over 7 days. This most time consuming task was gluing the pipe in place.

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Mercules Build Up Gauges in the Glovebox

Category: Interior