Hey all,
If any of you (I know there has to be someone besides me thinking this) have been looking for a way to use stock equipment like brackets and trip reset switches with Autometer take a gander at this. I can now mount into my 240Z dash using stock bracketing and the original stock trip reset knob.
For those that have not taken their gauge apart and seen the makeup of the inner "guts" of the gauge there are 2 ways you can reset the trip on Autometers Phantom models.
Method 1 would be to use a standard Autometer trip reset knob which I'm sure they either sell or provide with the gauge on the spline that comes through the face near where the needle rests.
Method 2 would be to attach something to the spline behind the gauge face which the gear mentioned above meshes with.
Perhaps some may not mind something sticking out the front I mean it's a fairly common thing in most cars and still some will not even care about being able to reset the trip, which is fine, it's your choice. For me however this simply would not do. Though the knob out the front is common it is not so on a Z (at least not on the S30s) and to me the thought of drilling through the front of the plastic covering the gauge to be able to attach a knob would just seem tacky. I did not however want to be without a resettable trip-meter so I had to figure something out and it would have to be inexpensive.
The picture below is the link to what I came up with, click the photo below to go to my Picasa album which contains more details on how to do this modification if you are interested in duplicating it or perhaps getting pointed in a direction to do something similar.
Best part of this is the price, I spent a grand total of $0 to make this work. I know a bunch of you already have stuff you can use for this but even if you had to buy all the materials needed for the project (excluding the drill & gauge) it would be under a high estimate of $15
Cheers!