I've been researching the cost of dials for my BMW Viento and this is what I came up with. These prices are for electronic dials (80mm ish speedo
and tacho) and clearly the prices will vary a bit depending on options and supplier, but I thought that as a rough comparison, it was worth posting.
I'm very tempted by the ETB ones and their web-site says that they will do discounts for a package deal.
Also, does anyone out there have experience of connecting dials to a BMW engine. In particular, the rev counter as BMW engines have individual coil
packs on each spark plug.
Note that the price for the VDO tacho may well be for the 52mm diameter one
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all.
Steve
[Edited on 29/12/11 by SteveWallace]
RMD are made by these lot http://www.caigauge.com/ who seem to have connections with everyone... historically anyway.
I bought an RMD speedo years ago, not got it installed yet though, but its a lot nicer looking than rally design's site make out from the dodgy
drawings
Dont forget the senders for them too... prices vary aswell
Both the Smiths and RMD gauges are both made by CAI and iirc don't include senders.
You might also want to have a look at STACK, they make very neat stepper motor gauges (Pro Analog
Range), and they come with (claimed to be very accurate) senders. If you add the cost of the senders the price difference is not that big.
Edit:
After checking at Merlin the price difference is bigger than I thought it would be.
The stack gauges are very nice though. I've got CAI gauges in another car, but I really prefer the STACK gauges I have now:
- Better, more uniform lighting (LED vs Bulb)
- 270 degrees of dial motion vs 110
- Molex plugged loom included, instead of the 6.3mm sockets on the CAIs
- Accurate solid state senders
- Proper sealing, no more water vapour on the gauge's dial.
[Edited on 29/12/11 by rost]
you can get a rpm pickup off the main engine loom or ecu on the bmw engine.
If you don't get the pro range you could get a set of stack or spa gauges for the same as the above but with better quality and accuracy.
I had separate guages for a while. They were crap. I now have a DigiDash2 from ETB/Demon T. It was easy to set up and reduced the number of wires considerably, although I still had to solder quite a few tiny wires from the senders. Can you not incorporate the BMW pod? That's certainly the cheapest option.