May 22, 2010.

I realized there’s a couple of things that I’d not covered in yesterdays post…

firstly I’ve bought another set of instruments, these are from a Mazda 929 roughly 1995 vintage, new old stock and an eBay bargain at $25!

Previously I’d bought a set from a BMW Mini however, cars in the 2000’s use a bus system to drive the instrumentation, which means there’s 5 pins to drive 100 functions, so unless you are an electronics guru you’re not going to be able to make them work.

however the stuff from the nineties has lot and lots pins, a set for each function, so they can be dealt with one at a time, so there is some hope of getting this to work.

Also the front top shock mounts I felt were too narrow, and as I had not got perfect alignment of the shock when it was installed I decided to widen the mounting area.

this meant slicing of the back mounting tab, and attaching a C section 17mm wide cut from 25mm SHS, to do this I used the band saw in the upright position and I also used it this way for cutting out the new mounting tabs, for these goods it was great!

Below are a couple of pics of the finished job: