Has anybody used one for starters, im looking for pics or ideas for possibly making it look a bit different. Ive found someone who used to sell films to change the colour of the displays. I was also wondering about splitting the clocks though i think the pcb would make this difficult. Ive had mine just about wired up ages ago, but i cant decide whether i prefer it to the vapor dash as its rather big, but does have all the gauges i need.

i think some of the mk1 mr2 guys have used them, they fit the retro sytle aswell, head over to mr2oc.co.uk for a looksy i reckon,

have you ever driven an astra with one fitted?

i had one so I woldn't bother - more of a gimick and not as useful as dials.

a qick look at current dashboards and you will see that almost all cars use dials - there is a reason for that - mainly that dials are easier and quicker to read.

Thanks, i only managed to find one reference to it on the mr2 forum but worth a look.

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Originally posted by 02GF74
have you ever driven an astra with one fitted?
i had one so I woldn't bother - more of a gimick and not as useful as dials.
a qick look at current dashboards and you will see that almost all cars use dials - there is a reason for that - mainly that dials are easier and quicker to read.

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The increments on the fuel guage are very large so you have a terrible time working out how much you have in the tank which is the last thing you want in a kit car.

There was a website that detailed changing over the illumination from orange to blue via different coloured leds which involved a solder job.

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Originally posted by andrew-theasby
Must admit i had wondered that, and wheter it would flicker between speeds?

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I used to play around with them alot when i was younger.... One thing i noticed about them is, if you have a fast car Astra GTE or faster it cant keep up with the accelaration.

My friend had one in a Turbo'd AStra it was useless as it accelarated faster than the dash could keep up..... so a kitcar its going to have no hope.

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when asked the time, you will look at the hands and know immediately it is quarter to eight whereas it will take you several seconds to work out what 19:43 means, or 7:43

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Originally posted by 02GF74

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Originally posted by andrew-theasby
Must admit i had wondered that, and wheter it would flicker between speeds?

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a needle on rev counter, not only will respond qucker than the curverd lcd display you have on that dash plus the brain processes the info quicker.

do the experiment yourself.

wear a digital watch and an analogue (with hands).

when asked the time, you will look at the hands and know immediately it is quarter to eight whereas it will take you several seconds to work out what 19:43 means, or 7:43.

Also with the speedo, you know the position of 70 mph on the dial but when you have that digial speedo, sometimes it take a bit of time to spot the differene between 68 and 88 or 98 mph .....


digidash and vapour etc. show speed as digits since it is easier/cheaper to make them like that I suppose.

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what about a new civic dash, the one in a freinds type r keeps up very well in terms of speed.

Thanks for the coomments, but i wont be using dials either way, just wanted to see if anyone had done anything interesting with the mounting of the astra dash to make it unique more than the vapor dash. The fuel gauge wont be an issue either as the vapor doesnt even have one, and as long as i know when its fairly low, thats all i need to know. Ill also have some shift lights for the revs anyway, but to be honest you pretty much know when to change gear by ear anyway, it is just a toy for me, which im sure is why most people use digital dashes. Regarding other digital dashes, i already have the astra one and all the senders as its the gte engine im using, only advantage of the vapor or similar is its smaller and very simple to wire up.
Any pics then? astra or vapor? Thanks

[Edited on 12/2/10 by andrew-theasby]

I had an Astra 16vGTE with the hideous digital dash. Whilst all the teenagers were fitting these poxy things to their Novas, I was serioulsy contemplating fitting the SRi clocks to mine.

Bargraph type displays aren't so bad, but they don't have anything like the resolution of a traditional meter movement. Proper digital displays are only useful for values that rarely change, or only change slowly i.e. time and temperature, but definitely not RPM or speed.

I retrofitted the digidash to my 1600 Mk2 Astra with a set of Webbers on it. I thought it was good, especially as I had the 5-door GTE sideskirts and bumpers. My first real modded car in my youth, lol.

I did find that the speedo wasn't directly accurate when accelerating (cue jokes about the capability of acceleration on a 1.6l....), and as such I'm not sure it would be best suited to a 7. But the bargraph style rev counter had no problems whatsoever and seemed wholly accurate.

I quite liked the dash as it was a feature of a proper flagship hothatch of the time, and it definatley suited the Astra. But looking back now, it does seem a little dated and is best left with the rare breed that is the GTE (or at least clean versions thereof).

However, one of the things also to be noted was that it read your speed inreverse as well..... made for some fun and games!

we had a digi dash in our meastro vanden plas......and the car talked to you.....