anyone with dash pods?

[Brunoboy]

I saw Cheeky's already installed, but anyone else have it in their car? and anyone have pictures of what they are using it for and how you did it? Thanks
-Shane

 

[maroonmetallic]

I had on in my Galant GSR dash.
It held the ECS panel very nicely. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/hsugh.gif

-Shawn

 

[cheekychimp]

Okay I know you have seen this. It actually wasn't that difficult to do but you do need to be aware of a couple of things.

Firstly on the pod itself you have these tabs at the back of the assembly: -

Now in order to make the pod sit nicely you are going to need to 'cut' two holes in the dash ( /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jawdrop.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif) near where your dash plaque sits to seat it properly. At best the pod will cover the dash plaque and at worst you may need to remove the plaque completely to get the pod to sit properly. You will need to cut additional holes for the wiring harness/sender connectors as well. Are you willing to do this? In my case it was not an issue. JDM cars have no dash plaque and that depression on my dash was previously covered with a flip up lid. The vinyl on that lid had split and the hinge assembly had broken, the holes for which were perfectly located for the sender lines and those tabs. In a nutshell this mod IMPROVED my dash no end. You will most likely have to DAMAGE yours to make this work.

Now, given that once properly installed it looks awesome (in my opinion). Here is what is involved.

First get some card and build a template for the gauge face. Look closely at my gauges. 60mm gauges will not fit. 52mm fit but cannot be mounted flush. The mounting plate needs to be a sort of 'L' shape so the gauge face sits back from the aperture. The SPA gauges work well because the digital readouts are in the middle. If you use analog 52mm gauges you may have difficulty seeing the tops and bottoms of the readout. Smaller gauges may work and you might be able to mount three. Once you have the template done get it made out of sheet metal, aluminium etc If you look at the left hand gauge on my pod, to the left you will see another small Allen bolt. It screws into the actual pod through a hole in the gauge face plate and secures at the back with a nyloc nut.

Now in order to get the pod to seat firmly and make it easily removable, what I did was this. I should also point out that my dash was out of the car at the time which made things much cleaner and easier. I cut out a section of the bottom of the depression and drilled some holes so that I could mount some flat metal stock running north to south under that hole. Then I took another piece of flat stock and made an 'L' shaped bracket and secured it to the first piece with tape so that the 'L' section pointed directly up. With a little bit of experimentation I gradually bent that piece back at an angle until it was sloped to sit flush on the back of the gauge mounting plate. Once that bracket was correctly bent and in the right position north/south on the flat stock I drilled holes and secured it permanently with two bolts.

Then I drilled a hole in the centre of the gauge mounting plate, mounted the pod, pushed it down until it was seated firmly and marked the 'L' shaped bracket with a Sharpie through the hole. Then it was just a case of drilling and tapping the 'L' shaped bracket to accept the small Allen bolt that secures the pod from the front.

It's a fiddly job but better than using double sided mounting tape in my opinion. You never know when you might need to change out a faulty gauge, rewire, change an LED in the display etc and my entire pod is now removable with a single Allen bolt.

Hope this helps.