On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 06:43:43 +0000, Graeme
wrote:

In message , T i m
writes

Remember the days when we bought and fitted such things in our cars
... paneling over glove boxes. What were they, Volts, charging Amps,
rev counter, manifold vacuum, engine temp anything else? ... and who
typically made them ... began with a 'Y' was it? (I had the set in my
Moggy Minor van). ;-)

Yaeger?

Hmm, I think it was more Japanese sounding than that (and it may not
have begun with a Y).

Smiths, too.

Yeah, I had quite a few Smiths bits at some time.

I had an Anglia (105E) with a complete fibreglass
dash, that fitted over the original dash, complete with moulded areas to
house meters. I'm sure there were moldings for three meters above dash
level, plus three more below. Speedo and rev counter behind the
steering wheel, then, top right and bottom right some combination of
fuel gauge, volts, amps, manifold vacuum, water temp and oil pressure.

Ah, that was another, oil pressure!

The fuel gauge was the standard Anglia unit, butchered to fit inside a
round housing, so all the meters matched. Oh, happy days, but all
fairly pointless :-)

;-)

I guess it was like most things they *could* serve a purpose (like
indicate when yer oil or big end shells needed changing) but as you
say, for most of the time they just looked good.

My favourite (and most expensive if I remember correctly) was the baby
rev-counter.

The good thing about meters though (assuming you knew how to read
them) was they did give you advanced warning of a problem. The
Daughters Ka doesn't have a temperature gauge so the first and only
warning you would get of a problem in the cooling system is when the
red light came on by witch time it could be too late?

A hose split on my old Rover 218SD the other day and I did the
remaining 25 miles home using the temperature gauge as a speed limiter
(max speed was about 50 mph, pretty good with no water I thought) ;-)

T i m