One for you electronic whizz kids (kids??) How easy would it be to fit a working Astra GTE digital dash. By fitting I mean wire up to another wiring loom. Would be relatively easy or hard work. All the wires and bits are with it and as the price is right I'm wondering if it's worth having a go.

If you have all the senders for the gauges, a wiring diagram and can work out a way to calibrate the speedo for your car (use a speedo healer?) it shouldn't be any more difficult that fitting any other set of gauges.

http://www.cavweb-forums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=44

you can even change the colours to make it look a bit more modern

it can be done in theory, i know of a bloke who fitted one into a 205 GTi but had all sorts of problems with the speed sensor.

you may get headaches trying to match senders.

I think the speedo transducer will be the biggest sticking point, replicating the signal that comes from the VX gearbox. And I think there's 2 different types of transducer.

There also not very good in bright sunlight even when in a factory fit place with a descent shade.

(ooh good some1 else suggested speed problems before i'd finished typing!)

Yeah we put one in billy's 16v powered luego.



You use the original gearbox transducer but hack the drive part off to leave just the sensor head. You then glue a load of magnets onto your diff flange at alternating polaritys (easiest way to get correct amount of pulses required with least magnets)

Mount the transducer as close to the rotating magnets as possible.

Hope they stay on longer than billys when you get to 100mph plus *

Can't remember the exact transducer model, think its AH, also can't remember the exact amount of magnets, billy will remember though..lol

Original credit to stu16v..... his install info & our post about fitting it to billy's is about somewhere. Connecting it up to any loom is easy, we had an advantage in that the temp sender and oil warning were already vauxhall but in operation they are pretty generic. The ford sierra fuel sender needs a resitor added to bring it into the same scale as the vauxhall guage (which we did'nt get round to sorting out)

HTH

Cheers

G



* Speed was achieved on private land



[Edited on 15/10/06 by Mr G]

I fitted one of these to my nova (shame on me but we all have a first car) and with the right senders it seemed easy ish. Also with a spare hour and some lighting gels you can make it a pretty shade of electric blue to match your car like i did!

I used to have a 16 V GTE and the digital rpm counter sucks - too much lag.

If it were such a brill idea, then all new cars would have the bar graph display- they don't; they have a dials with a pointer.

Each to their own I guess but if you can get it cheap, then don;t lket me put you off.