TwinTorino

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Since winter is basically here.. time to move back into the interior and work on all of the electrical items that have been neglected. For the past while, we have been driving around with a new Mustang cluster buried behind the original dash. If the spacing between gauges were similar this would be OK for now, but they are far off which make seeing anything next to impossible. That brings back the dash design we started years ago.

Several goals with this design:
- Maintain overall original 1968 looking gauges - this was a one year only color
- Backlight with LED's instead of the original front lighting (requires transparent faces)
- Integrate Mustang air core gauges into cluster so they can be hooked up to the Mustang cluster electronincs
- Use newer style Mustang digital odometer
- Add more real gauges instead of idiot lights
- Integrate all of the Mustang dash lights like ABS, check engine, traction control etc..
- House everything in a modified original Torino gauge cluster housing

First a look at the oringal parts and pieces. Here are the references - an original 1968 cluster with the tach option, and the "donor" 2003/2004 Cobra cluster with a boost gauge. After that, some spare clusters we have for mock-up - a Mustang GT gauge cluster and a base 1968 Torino cluster.








After countless hours of work using Adobe Illustrator, the first image is what we came up with in the beginning. After some more time and taking into consideration of how the Mustang gauges are set up and how they work, we came up with the last one which we will run with for the time being. The hardest part here was accomadating the Mustang smaller gauges into the package. The lower design also matches the dimensions of the original cluster exactly.

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OK - this all sounds great in theory.. but how do we make it work?

Largest challenges include:
- Making up transparent faces with LED backlighting.. and on a budget
- Reversing the direction of the gas gauge and oil pressure gauge on the cluster so they follow a logic direction of rotation
- Packaging everything together
- Remotely connecting gauges and odometer to circuit board. This has to be done since the gauge spacing is different.

First task is working with gauge faces. After doing some extensive research on the web.. we came up with this solution. Since everything is done in Illustrator, it exists as a vector graphic. In a nutshell this means that you can increase the size of the images as large as you want an they will not distort (unlike normal rasterized images). In theory I could print this out large enough to put on the side of a building if I really wanted to ). This provides for some very sharp images which is necessary for print out things like the text and tick marks.

By making up a set of layered images with a high res laser jet printer, we can get the transparent/opague effect. Top layer is a standard transparency sheet printed on the backside (image reversed). The bottom layer is a standard 20lb piece of white paper. Both of these sheets are bonded together to make one piece. Since I did not have the photo mount spray adhesive at the time of making these pictures up, you will have to use your imagination of what things will look like when they are perfectly aligned.

The final picture shows using an LCD computer monitor at night for backlighting. Little to no light passes through the black sections. Looks very similar to a modern cluster. This was relatively easy for the effect it gives. Ideally, we would silkscreen the parts on appropriate materials like auto manufacturers would.. but this will have to do for now until we lock in the design. For under $10, it sure does the trick.

For adding the check engine, ABS lights etc, we will simply add another transparency sheet and omit these images from the front layer. This way you will not be able to see them unless they are illuminated.

More to come as we progress.