Spider tri-gauge cleaned up

I have had a gauge restoration kit from David at Parts Correct on my shelf for a while, and today I got to install some of the parts in the tri-gauge destined for my Spider.  The gauge that came with the car had some dings in the trim ring and was missing a calibration screw so I dug into my gauge box for a better one to rebuild.  Ended up putting together a ‘best from several’ gauge.  The hardest part of the job was getting all the parts clean enough – especially keeping lint off the black tri-gauge faces.  Lint-free wippes and Isopropyl Alcohol work wonders.  The easy part was fitting David’s parts.  The rubber ring that fits in the chrome trim ring fit perfectly, the insert needed no ‘adjustment’ to have the gauge fit back together perfectly.  Absolutely spot-on fitting parts.

Ha!  I didn’t realize I restored a metric gauge until right now.  Might have to swap the business end of things tomorrow – or just deal with it – all my engineering and chemistry homework was in metric units so I’m comfortable enough in C rather than F.  In my defense, I did this in about 15 minutes tonight.  Big difference can be seen between the ‘usual’ old gauge and one with the dust removed, glass cleaned, the trim ring polished and a new insert.

I repainted the one installed in the gauge – was going to wait until I saw how good the color looked to spray this other one.  Decent enough match.  I couldn’t find the Duplicolor ‘Desert Mica’, so I went with ‘Champagne Opal’ I think it was.  I used a heat gun to dry the paint so I wouldn’t have to wait.

This really is pretty easy work.  

Pick-n-pull on a small scale.

One part down, several thousand to go.  No rush, no destination, no agenda, just a little task before driving to daycare.