E30 Zone

I have been fiddle-farting around and dummied together a 9000rpm facia. This is the first attempt:



I drew up a few facias (8000, 8500, 9000) on CorelDraw and printed with a lazer colour printer onto an overhead transparency and the back of the transparency white. For this trial I slit the facia to fit without removing the needles - not my dash so I do not want to risk damaging the needles.

Some variations:

BTW It's for a M42 with bigger inlet and exhaust valves, Schmitthelm valve springs, Schrick Ti retainers, Catcams cams, mechanical lifters. Schmitthelm valve springs were being run in 6R4 metro and DFV Cosworths. They were reving the 6R4 metro with these springs to 13500 safely.

8500rpms will not be out of the question.

And you'll probably make fookall more power from 7000 onwards only noise

Nice idea though! I think there's a little too many lines on it though, 500rpm segments may be enough like the original.

If an E30 M3 cluster was used as the range is a little closer to fit 8K on the binacle and the oil-temp gauge section is alot smaller than the mpg guage on the normal clusters, you could add in the 9K very easily without having to get rid of the oil temp section.

you also could rotate the needle anti-clockwise on the shaft a little and move the stop, you'd then be able to balance the graph around the binacle better and it would look very original looking


Probably easier to just show you what i mean about the extra space just with a picture

could you fit a 6pot coding plug, then adjust the dial to suit? due to the coding plug say 6000rpm would read 4000rpm am i right? then the needle wouldnt spin around as far

newt wrote:could you fit a 6pot coding plug, then adjust the dial to suit? due to the coding plug say 6000rpm would read 4000rpm am i right? then the needle wouldnt spin around as far

This is correct and a good idea. tacho will read 2/3rds with a 6pot coding plug fitted.

The lines should be a similar spacing to the speedo lines for it to look OEM IMHO.

e301988325i wrote:

newt wrote:could you fit a 6pot coding plug, then adjust the dial to suit? due to the coding plug say 6000rpm would read 4000rpm am i right? then the needle wouldnt spin around as far

This is correct and a good idea. tacho will read 2/3rds with a 6pot coding plug fitted.

The lines should be a similar spacing to the speedo lines for it to look OEM IMHO.

Be nearly good for a 10K redline then

Dave_M3 wrote:And you'll probably make fookall more power from 7000 onwards only noise

Nice idea though! I think there's a little too many lines on it though, 500rpm segments may be enough like the original.

If an E30 M3 cluster was used as the range is a little closer to fit 8K on the binacle and the oil-temp gauge section is alot smaller than the mpg guage on the normal clusters, you could add in the 9K very easily without having to get rid of the oil temp section.

you also could rotate the needle anti-clockwise on the shaft a little and move the stop, you'd then be able to balance the graph around the binacle better and it would look very original looking

I'd love to get an M3 gauge. They are rare down here in Australia.


I also am hoping it'd make more that noise over 7000. Quite a deal of work has been done on ithe head. The flow figures are:

NICE!!!

I'm building an M42b21 using S54 ITBs for my iS so going to have to do alot of work to the head too but 7.5-8K from the M3 clocks will be more than enough for me I think :p

Dave_M3 wrote:NICE!!!

I'm building an M42b21 using S54 ITBs for my iS so going to have to do alot of work to the head too but 7.5-8K from the M3 clocks will be more than enough for me I think :p

s42 ftw

Indeed!!!

If you have a spare 25K

If an E30 M3 cluster was used as the range is a little closer to fit 8K on the binacle and the oil-temp gauge section is alot smaller than the mpg guage on the normal clu

Looking further into this, I was wondering if an M3 coding plug with a replica M3 facia is all that is needed to convert a e30 tach.

Fixed!

BTW how do coding plugs work? What's their circuit?