I might as well finish it off.
I just took a pair of needle nose pliers and busted out the backplane.
Ordered ProSport Premium 60mm gauges. They are pretty shallow.
Ground the tabs off of the silver part of the bezel.
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Then ground most of the bezel base away so the the whole gauge fit through.
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Removed the "leather" hood from the plastic hood base.
Epoxied the silver ring back to the bezel.
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I just siliconed the finished bezel to the gauge face in case I want to swap.
Wired up the plugs.
OEM black wire - ground
OEM purple wire - constant
OEM orange wire - switched
Ran the sensor wires through the huge grommet on the passenger side behind the battery.
Then I needed a way to hold the hood to the gauge... here's what i came up with using parts from the junk drawer.. your solution may be better.. i hope.
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yup.. just a hose clamp.
now to get it in the dash...
i just bent and cut the bracket that came with the gauge..
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and took a screw, lock washer and nut from the junk drawer, drilled a hole in the hood and used it to sandwich the dash.
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Then I just took some double-stick and put the hood covers back on.
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not sure about these 'black out' gauges that everyone sells... with the top down on the car you can't read them at all.
I wired up a mini-toggle switch so I can flip between the 'amber' and 'white' LED colors to see if that will help in sun light.
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oh... keep the hoods numbered or something... they are all slightly different.