I've always liked the look of the 280ZX Turbo OEM gauge face for the "OIL" gauges. They incorporated a oil temp gauge as part of the oil pressure gauge into the same housing. I'm working on a project where I'm going to modify the OEM 350Z center gauge cluster to accept an oil temp gauge as well as pressure. It's been a real challenge to get this to work. The pics show the OEM 280ZXT gauge face in the 350Z "OIL" nacelle. This scale is not accurate and will be changed from white to orange to maintain the OEM 350Z look, as well as changes to the layout of the scale itself but at least you can get an idea. One of the biggest challenges was how to place the oil temp movement so that it would come down out of the top of the cluster, just like the 280ZXT. This was accomplished by using an old spring from a camera I had laying around to make a flexible shaft. The bearing collar for the gauge needle shaft was cobbled up from an old 350Z oil gauge movement. I also liked the fact that Nissan put backlit function names on the 280ZX and first-gen 300ZX's for "OIL", "VOLTS", etc.,
gauge covers. I've incorporated that (rather crudely at this point) into the cluster as well so at night, "OIL" and "VOLTS" will be back-lit.
Obviously, I have more work to do but I thought I'd share what I've done so far.

 

thats different

 

"Lee Van Cleef is THE MASTER, this fall on CBS...."

 

lol

 

In the spirit of the new digital Z so to speak would it possible to use a digital ouput of the readings and incoporate the small LCD from the far left gauge into the center and right pod and split the screen as it does for the lap timer to display oil temp and oil pressure and volts and boost?

 

Sure, it could be done - but it's far beyond the scope of anything I would want to attempt.

 

Hmm, I'm sure one of our more code adept Z owners could write something to a small logic chip to convert the signal. Heck we could use something like the Greddy Informeter system to source the signals from the OBD 2 port and then route them to that display. Its not hard work but does take some programming skills...I wish I had time to work on stuff like this..

 

Nice attempt Greg. What happened to doing the boost gauge?

 

Trying to figure out a way to easily illuminate the pointer needle, as well as the fact that it may be a while (or never) before I go FI made me turn my efforts to something I could use while NA and that would be the oil temp gauge. As it is, I might not even be able to get the oil temp gauge to work out because of clearance issues with the top of the dash cluster cover. We'll see.

 

how is the top needlle thing going to clear the cover? em i seeing it wrong?

 

No, you're not seeing it wrong. As I was saying in the post prior to yours, I'm not sure it will clear the cover.