I would like to ditch the circa 1970's digital clock in the middle of the dash and turn the area into a shift light (very stealth). I don't really want to clamp an external one anywhere etc. I like things to look very clean.

I found this bugger,
http://www.chiptorque.com.au/101608.php
anyone know of any others ?

When I'm done I'll do a write up in the How To's section.

 

that would b pretty cool but the only problem with putting that where the clock is ... it would b hard to watch rpms / light at same time dont ya think... i got the autometer shift light doesnt exactly look all crucially nice but i can mount it right in front of my tach which is great

 

nice

 

I am in the midst of designing and building a small, red lcd panel that will fit into the spot where the clock is..

since I have to teach myself microprocessor programming to get this thing running, at 1st I'm only making it show boost info, both in digits and a moving bar graph. once i get the basics of the programming down, it should be fairly easy to add other things to sense such as EGT, A/F, and a shift notifier... its all just a matter of reading a voltage and knowing what it translates to. Imagine having that whole 3" x 1" panel where the clock is blinking red to shift... you would catch that without moving eyes off road..

I'll let everybody here know when I get somethign working.. I had to put it off for a couple of months since work sent me out of the country, But I'll be back to working on it in a couple of weeks.

as for that LED that you put up the URL to, what i would do is drill a small hole in dash, to left og wheel right by the mirror adjust button. Thats where my alarm LED is, it's not conspicuous, and easily visible. also if you ever get an alarm you can use that same LED, or you could simply hook up a blinker relay to ti to make it blink when the car is off, making people thing you have alarm.

 

The best part is that with shipping and the currency conversion it's only going to cost you $70.
I did a google search for shiftlights a few months ago and couldn't find anything that was compact like this AND that you could program. Most of them were the 2-1/2" wall-clock style tach/light combo. The "programmable" shift lights that didn't also have used a chip and were friggin huge. The least expensive of any of those was like $99.

Good find

 

Thwack: a multi-stage shift light like this one would be bad-*** if you can make them. Maybe even one light for each RPM setting that you have.

 

How's this?
Had one and loved it, easy to install and adjust.

http://www.rev-lite.com/rev.html

 

hmmm... all I really want is a shift light.. I know when I'm getting close so a multistage / digital tach I don't need. I think I'm going to just pull the clock and put a piece of smoked plexiglass in its place ( with a super-bright LED behind it, connected to some piece of electronics)


Thanks for the replies !

 

As for the AutoMeter shift lights....

In order to get them to work on the DSM 4G63, you had to have the light sent off to be reworked by AutoMeter to work on those cars. Since they are distributor-less, it wouldn't pick up the right signals. Nate Crispman sent me a cool writeup a long time ago as to how you could wire up a simple light to the foil run on the back of the instrument clister so that once it hit a certain RPM, it would trigger a LED.......maybe that could be adapted to a cluster of LED's instead (get an AutoMeter shift light, upgrade it to the LED bulbs, gut the internals of the light housing so it no longer goes by the RPM pill but simply feeds off of a power signal, then rig the wire on your instrument cluster to trigger the LED's). Since LED's require a lot less power to turn on, I don't think a regular lamp would be able to light up just by wiring it up to the back of the tach panel. I'll look around for that info.

Josh

 

Having done some midnight club/dark empty industrial area loading dock/keep your frickin' lights off and drive by the streetlamps type-**** I can see the value of a multistage setup.

BUT I'm cheap and can see the value of the Aussie setup.

Great thread.

 

A shift light is EXTREMELY easy to do.. First, pick up an MSD RPM Activated switch and an ajustable RPM Module.. Its well worth the money.. You can use any light for the output, from (What I'm using is an autometer mini shiftlight lamp for a autometer tach) but if you want stealth, you can take a small LED for an auto alarm and mount it virtually anywhere in your line of site... It requires 1 wire to the ECU Tach output lead (if you can't find it under the dash) and you can power it off any switched 12v source.. I hooked it up in about 30 minutes once I found a good switched source (The Cigar lighter wiring harness under the rear section of the center console)

Whats better Is I mounted the RPM Activated switch module (I wish they made it smaller, but such is life) behind the lower garnish moulding where my S-AFC is mounted, but on the console so all you can see is the white RPM Module for the shift light, which I can just plug in a different one whenever necessary..

I can honestly say this was the second easiest modification I had done, the easiest was the Buschur air filter upgrade..

I'll try to snap a picture of it and post it if you guys want to see what the setup looks like..

 

Oh.. and to make things even easier, if you already have an S-AFC hooked up, you can splice it into the TACH wire you already have hooked up to the S-AFC.. You could get power and ground off that same harness, however I recommend a different power and ground source as the drain could affect the ECU..

 

For the money you could just get tha rev lite and wire into the one led and remote it. The lights do come on fast though as it is 200 RPM increments so it's not like a light at a time.
Just my .02

 

Oh.. and if you want a TEENY TINY Shift light, I found a great use for those cheesy "Cigarette lighter mini lights" that they sell at pepboys.. It looks kinda like a shift light, and its bright as hell with a full 12v applied to it.. This was what I was originally going to use before I found that I had another autometer pro-lite laying around..

Keep in mind those pep-boy (Type R Twin mini lights) as lights their really cheesy, but they are about 1" long, look like a tiny shift light, and can be mounted anywhere.. also since their black and really small, they will basically be totally stealthy.. They are made with those bright blue LED's that can blind you if you look right into them, which would make a good shift light ..

 

There are just so many ways to do this.. I used parts I had laying around for my race car.. In the end both cost about the same.. I haven't really researched this because I already had the parts, but I'm sure there is probably a small adjustable shift-light out there that works with a 4 cyl car..