Classic Gauge Restoration

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Berowra Heights, NSW
Classic Gauge Restoration

Professional restoration of Automotive and industrial Gauges and instrumentation.

02/09/2026

So here is a quick video of a custom dash for a pretty wild mustang. Apart from a speed signal amd tach signal wire the rest of the dash is plug an play using the original loom.

12/08/2026

Nigel wanted an RT/49 Charger dash for his car and had been looking for ages.
He found this one in NZ for a reasonable price showed me the photos and I told him I could work with that.. I think someone had fitted this to a yanky Chrysler which is why all the mounting tabs were cut off, a gaping hole was cut near the speedo and another piece near the ammeter. Plus it was missing the oil gauge, the tacho and other internals, BUT it had a good lens!!!
I started by gutting and cutting one of my own "spare" housings and using all the templates that I made decades ago, cut out the new speedo hexagon, the tacho holes, the new ammeter holes and the oil pressure mount, a day later I had everything fitted.
But I had to find a replacement temp and fuel gauges as they were both faulty, use a standard Chrysler tacho as a donor, make a new oil gauge dial plate, new oil gauge dial plate, oil gauge mounting plate, plus the factory grey plastic 2 terminal wiring connection. I had to go through me pointer spares and raid a set of pointers which I masked and painted. Overhaul and calibrate the speedo, then make up new light tubes for the High Beam and Alt light between the speedo and tacho. Then I spent ages polishing up the front lens and screw it all together with freshly sand blasted and zinc plated screws. It mightn't sound a lot but there is well over 50 hours in there...

13/07/2026

Loads of jobs coming in and some going back out.. Mark from Oppermanns Mechanical sent me in the Speedo & Tacho from his XY. The car is running a new 6 speed transmission and doesn't have a cable output, so the decision was made to do a custom electronic speedo conversion whilst keeping it in MPH- not an easy job for a lot of reasons, one being the huge pointer cover that actually would cover the digital odometer on the original Autometer speedo. Also the movement itself needs to be swapped over from mounting under the tacho to mounting on top of the circuit board.
9 hours later the speedo looks as factory as I can get it. Even the tripmeter reset is remote mounted on a small plastic box. Plus I fitted on of my custom made 3d printed flex light tubes for the high beam as the original was melted all over the mechanical speeso...
The tacho was easier, strip it apart clean it out, paint the pointer, fit one of my custom circuit boards and one of my custom stickers , calibrate it to V8 and job done

02/07/2026

So many of you know I bought a custom made printing machine so I can ink print dials like they were back in the day.
I have been printing various dials over the past 18 months, but finally I have tested its limits.. it was designed so I could print HK speedo dials and the front dial cover plate on the HK dash which is just under 500mm long.
Its the first test print and it was slightly out of alignment on the LHS, but im pretty happy it all fits and works - a bit more practice and we should be in business...

28/06/2026

Recently I have had a few customers and friends reach out to make sure I am ok as I haven't been posting. That's touching, I am still here and still going, for the past 18 months its been an uphill battle while walking neck deep in a swamp, but as the old Berger paints ad said you " keep on keeping on".
Ryan sent me in a VK Commodore dash for some TLC and to convert the economy gauge into a tacho. I've been repairing gauges since 1989 and each year plastics are becoming more brittle and dials are becoming rustier and in general parts are getting nigh impossible to find.
I stripped the dash right apart and scrubbed out the case and front panel and the rear circuit board. I then resoldered all the connections on the board. Next up I had to get some custom stickers made up for the Volts, Oil, Fuel, Temp and Clock dials as they were really rusty. I then sand blasted and painted the dials and fitted the new stickers- one day I might start ink printing them .
The next job was to find a replacement speedo pointer as it crumbled into pieces and then carefully clean the pointers and paint them all, then I overhauled the Oil & volts and reassembled the 4 small gauges and calibrated them.
The clock should have been a quick hour job, but no, the plastic housing turned to dust it was so brittle. I stripped 4 spare dash's and 2 were pretty bad. The 3rd was useable so I reassembled the clock and moved onto the speedo.
Since the late 80's we were getting these with a common problem that causes the pointer to catch and flick all the way back to zero (eventually breaking the pointer) 4 decades later they are even worse. as an apprentice they were a 25-30 minute job, now it's quite easy to spend 2 hours getting them sorted..
The last gauge was the Tacho conversion. I use the Economy gauge dial and modify a brand new Autometer tacho, the good thing is they are super fast responding and super accurate, but the pointer will sit where ever it wants with the power off...
I pick up the power and earth for the tacho from the original points on the circuit board, but the signal I have fitted a spade terminal on the rear of the cluster.
Lastly I have fitted new green LED's for the illumination and a brand new NUCOM front lens and clock reset.

22/04/2026

Another "quick & Simple" job was this XA Fuel sender and wiper switch from an XP Falcon.
Kimble sent them down for me to repair them both. The switch had completely fallen apart internally, so I stripped it apart, cleaned it out, polished up the brass contacts and re-staked and then soldered the switch plate and the shaft back together. Once done I just had to reassemble it. Nice and quick no more than 2 hours.
The fuel sender on the other hand was so badly corroded the float arm was jammed, the float had a massive hole in it and the filter was choked.
I stripped it all apart and acid washed it, sand blasted it, acid washed it again, and then Zinc plated it all. I then made a new contact for it, fitted a new resistance card, a new float and a new filter, Not straight forward as year of being in fuel contaminates the steel thus the double acid and a sandblast. Hopefully the plating will last...

19/04/2026

I am still here, I just keep missing my 8am posting deadline..
I have been busy doing loads of various jobs, one that was "simple" was this Wilmot & Breeden CALORMETER . Basically it is a temperature gauge.
This one is fitted to a David Brown Tractor and has been on it for close to 100 years. The tractor is getting restored so they sent this to me. I told them "No Promises" as I had never laid eyes on one before.
Then I stripped it I found it was completely flogged out, the shafts were worn nearly 50% through and even the slot that attaches to the Bimetal strip was nearly cut in half.
I took the gear and put it on my lathe and machined the worn end off and then bored the gear out. I then machined up a piece of brass rod and press fitted (and then soldered to make sure it wouldn't move) back through the gear.
I then cut and filed a piece of brass shim and soldered it into the slot and filled it into shape.
I also had to make a couple of bushes in the main 2 supports to help centralise it all back into mesh.
Once all of that ( 8 hours from head scratching to 1st assembly) was done I worked out how to reset and calibrate it.
According to the writing on the lens "when running on vaporising oil the pointer must be in the green sector" .... so the large red portion is actually under optimum temperature, the green is the go zone and then there is a red line to tell you that you have cooked it....

10/03/2026

I haven't posted in a while and some of that is "stage fright" the last post has had over 700,000 views.. them big shoes to follow. So here is one I printed a few weeks ago. Can anyone work out what car its from ??

12/02/2026

A while ago I posted a video of my new Pad printer printing a HK Monaro tacho dial, for me that was a momentous occasion as it proved the whole setup worked... since then I have punxhed out a few sets of HQ GTS gauges, but they are all flat dials and in the past I have screen printed them. Here is my first effort on a dished dial, it's an LC/J Gtr speedo and I am pretty stoked that it has turned out pretty good.

09/02/2026

Time flies when your crazy busy. All year I have been focused on finishing a vintage dash, and it's quite possibly the last one I bother doing unless the owner is willing to pay an hourly rate as you end up soaking so much time into them as everything is a "one off".
Luckily I finished it a few weeks ago so have been hard at it trying to push the "quick " jobs through.
Here are a set of 1959 Porsche 356 gauges that I have just finished, they were in pretty good shape for their age - but everything has its own problems. The speedo and tacho have internal flexible rubber light tubes which over the years become hard and then either shatter or in this case melt, and they melted all over the movements. Also these were 6V from factory so I had to convert the fuel level gauge and oil temp gauges to 12V and make new warning light lenses as they had turned to powder..
The tacho was a problem as the flex light tubes are not available and are shaped like a shoe- light goes in where you slip your foot, and comes out through a hole on the sole below your toes.. but there is not even 5mm between the end of the steel tubes in the case and the back of the dial. I spent 3 days making various "light tubes" but to get the tacho into the housing you actually have to slip the movement in whilst rotating it 90 degrees to align it. I was tearing my hair out so I told George (best Sparky in QLD ) of the dilemma and said my last option would be to fit LED's with a pigtail coming out of the original light tubes on the case. He said "sure no problems" so now they work and these is ZERO light bleed from either warning light or from the illumination (which is a common problem for these tachos...)
The cases were fairly rusty so I sand blasted them and Zinc plate the cases, brackets, tripmeter reset k**b and all the screws & nuts etc. Luckily the owner imported a set of new bezels from Germany, so when the gauges were finished all I had to do was polish the lenses and roll new bezels on.

Address

PO BOX 18
Berowra Heights, NSW
2082

Telephone

+61412963758

Website

http://www.classicgaugerestoration.com.au/

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