LHD gauges

[Dave Larnder]

Has anyone ever changed the oil pressure gauge and the temp. gauge in the instrument panel to suit LHD conditions? In other words to make these two more visible to the driver while driving. Well I've just done it, and what a job it turns out to be.

The first tip to anybody else who contemplates this conversion, is to make sure you can remove the Bulb from the thermostat housing first, or you are wasting your time, or run the risk of breaking that connection and it ain't cheap to have the temp gauge repaired. I have only done 1800miles in my TR3A since total rebuild was completed in February this year, and was amazed to see how much crud had formed around the probe inside the housing, previously removed from the block and top hose, which I had to very carefully scrape away with a stanley knife blade in my hand, not in it's holder for more flexibility. Then I sprayed WD40 all around the probe and left it for an hour or so and extremely gently eased the probe side to side until it came away, much to my relief. After that it is plain sailing by retrieving the thermo tube back through the fire wall and out of the instrument panel.

With the other two gauges removed, I placed the thermo tube through the new hole in the dash panel, and then started to thread it back through the firewall and back into the thermostat housing which was already installed back onto the block with a new bellows type thermostat in place and with the top hose reconnected. Next I put a 3/4" copper pipe cap with a 3/16" hole drilled through it into the bye pass hose and connected up.

The oil pressure gauge was a simple job to relocate, just need to bleed it once the engine is running.

Now another reason for this job was because I have to have the ammeter fixed, as I blew it recently by accidentally earthing out one of it"s wires, also the petrol gauge has never worked since I installed it, but found that that was my fault as I had not earthed it with a wire around the centre fixing bolt to the earth terminal behind the instrument panel.

I'm off to England later today to have these 2 gauges checked and repaired and when I get back in a week's time I can finish what I thought was an easy job, which it was, but very time consuming. I hope to visit Stoneleigh on Sunday on my way down to Winchester from Liverpool.

 

Dave (TResa)