Gauging The Difference

I'd been researching for some time now to try and come up with a cleaner set of mini gauges to do away with the grand father dials that reside on the Thruxton from birth, and after much internal debate I decided to install a set of mini 60mm chrome dressed gauges, with black rather than white faces and the idiot lights set within the speedo itself...

It is important that I point out that the original idiot lights are close to useless on a sunny day, and this will be much improved as the new idiot lights will be LED's

Here's what the original Gauges looked like....

The first step was to order both gauges and in doing so I had to source these from different suppliers, as the Speedo is of the mechanical kind, whilst the tacho is of the electronic kind....

5 days later ( don't you just luv the Internet ) the gauges arrived at my door and I must say that they exceeded my expectations with their quality given the relatively little spend.. go the Aussie dollar... 

Now much to eager to wait another moment I went into the garage late that night and started the stripping of the original setup....

This is an extremely simple process as all of the wiring is fed into 1 master plug, feeding cleanly into the rear of the headlight... All in all it only required the unlocking of 1 plug and the removal of a handful of  " Allen key " fixing bolts....

Here's some pictures of the removal process:

          Gauges Removed                                               Wiring within Headlight Assembly

        Original Gauges Removed                                     Wiring connections of Original Gauges

With everything removed it was time to wire up the new gauges... To ensure all went well you must wire 2 new diodes into the blinker wiring given the idiot lights are now an LED's... If you miss this vital step all 4 blinkers will flash regardless of which blinkers were engaged... These diodes should set you back $1 at the most....

      Picture of the diodes                                               How to set up the diodes before wiring them in

With the wiring behind me it was time to install the gauges and hope I had picked the right gauges to set the bike off just right... I wanted them to be classic in their look, but certainly not look like " after market add on's " if that makes sense...

Upon installation I was extremely happy with the look of the new gauges and I am so pleased I went with black faced dials and LED idiot lights... ( I wasn't quite sure about the black faces myself until now )

The lights themselves are now perfect in their function, even on the brightest of days and the clean lines of the gauges look amazing in real life... It is hard to belief this small change has made such a big difference to the bikes look and stance... If I had my time over again, this would be the first change I ever made...

The after pictures... let me know what you think...