European Classic Gauge Restoration, Repair and Customization

Porsche and Mercedes-Benz have pages of their own. Everything else European comes through here: Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Triumph, Lotus, De Tomaso, BMW, Volkswagen and Fiat. The instruments are mostly VDO, Smiths, Veglia, Jaeger and Motometer, which between them account for most European dashboards of the period.

What a restoration involves is the same whatever the badge, and it is set out on the restoration page rather than repeated here. What changes between these cars is the instrument maker, and that is what decides the work: a Smiths movement, a Veglia dial and a Jaeger face each want different handling, and so do the faults that come with them.

Ferrari

We see Ferraris steadily, from the early cars through to the nineties, and the instruments themselves change less across that span than you would expect. Veglia Borletti supplied them for decades, so a set from a fifties car and a set from the sixties are closer relatives than the cars around them are.

The older sets usually arrive in reasonable condition, which is not the same thing as being right. There is still plenty wrong. Coils expand over the decades and the hairsprings go with them, so a good share of the work is tightening both back to where they belong. And while an instrument is apart it gets done properly rather than minimally: housings zinc plated so rust has nowhere to start, insides painted, and the whole thing given the attention it deserves. Through the fifties and sixties it is usually the whole set, or the speedometer on its own. By the eighties the trouble concentrates in the speedometer.

The thing we tell every Ferrari owner before anything else is that the parts are the hard part, and the lack of parts is what makes the work difficult. They are scarce, and the aftermarket has not filled the gap the way it has for other cars. Some aftermarket senders in particular do not work properly, and a number of other aftermarket parts are simply not good enough to put in a car like this. What that means in practice is that a Ferrari job can take longer and cost more than the same work on something else, not because the instrument is harder, but because finding the correct part for it is.

Cars we have had on the bench include the 365 GTB/4, Testarossa, 250 GT Lusso, 500 TR, Mondial, 308 GTS, 308i GTS, 328 GTS, 512 TR, 512 BBi, 250 GTE, 355, 360 Modena Spider, 550, 625 TRC, 400 Superamerica, 330 GT, Dino and the 250 GT Pininfarina Cabriolet Series II, along with Ferrari race cars and a number of other models. One of them is written up in full: the 1966 Ferrari 330 GTS.

Alfa Romeo

Alfas come through steadily and across a wide span, from the fifties to the nineties. The 1750 GTV, the GT Stepnose, the GTV6, the 2600 SZ Zagato, the Junior Zagato, the Duetto, the 1600, the Giulietta Normale and the Giulietta Sprint Veloce Coupe, and a great many Spiders: the Giulia Spider, the Spider Veloce, the Spider 2000. Other models from those decades turn up too.

One exception. We do not work on the automatic transmission Spiders from the eighties and nineties.

The earlier cars, the fifties and sixties, are mostly restoration work, and they behave like the other older European instruments on this page. That does not mean they arrive in good order. Worn bearings, worn frames, worn gears. Most of them get stripped and cleaned, the worn parts replaced, and come back rebuilt.

As we get into the eighties the format changes. The gauges stop being separate instruments and become one large cluster, built in plastic housings.

The Spiders in particular arrive with a long list. Odometer gears wear down and so do a lot of the other components. Tachometers stop working, speedometers stop working, and many of these run electronic movements that have simply aged out. The biggest single problem is the blue Mylar circuitry on the back of the cluster, which breaks down. These are repairs rather than restorations, and usually several at once.

BMW

BMW is the one brand on this page where we work on both the cars and the bikes, and they are two different jobs.

On the car side: the 2002 and 2002tii, the Isetta, the E9 3.0 CS coupe, the Bavaria, the E21 and E30 3 Series, the 325i and 325is, the 528i, the 5 Series, the 633 CSi and 635 CSi, the M1, the M3 and the M6. On the bikes: the R71, R50/2, R60/5, R75/5, R75/7, R80, R90/6, R90S, R100S, R100RS, R100RT, R100GS, K100RS and K1100LT, along with GS race bikes. Other models from those years as well.

The bikes are mostly mechanical movements, so they come apart and get cleaned properly rather than patched. Worm gears and plastic cross gears are the usual culprits and the usual replacements. Clocks are a recurring problem, and on a bike like the R90S the answer is generally a quartz conversion. One of the bikes is written up in full: the 1973 BMW R75/5.

One of the cars is written up in full as well: the 1980 BMW 633 CSi, rescreened to read the car it has been rebuilt into.

The cars split by era. The earlier ones, the 2002 and its contemporaries, get much the same treatment as our Porsche work, and for a good reason: the movements are close relatives. The same coils, the same mechanical movements, and in many cases the same parts. What happens to a 356 instrument on this bench is very nearly what happens to a 2002 instrument, and the Porsche page goes through that work in detail.

The modern clusters, the 325 and its relatives, come in for odometer work more than anything else, along with replacing components that have worn. A 1990 M3 is a fair example of the harder end: odometer repaired, odometer gear set replaced, the circuit soldered, and the odometer motor coil replaced. By the nineties the circuit board itself is often what has failed, and those get a new board rather than a repair.

One small thing we do on almost everything that comes through, BMW or otherwise. We replace the light bulbs, and we use OEM bulbs whether the instrument came off a BMW, a Ferrari, a Porsche or a Lamborghini. Nobody asks for it. It is the difference between an instrument that works and one that looks right at night.

Volkswagen

We see a lot of Volkswagens: Beetles and Super Beetles, the Bus and the Transporter, Karmann Ghias, Vanagons and Eurovans, the Thing, dune buggies, the Cabrio, and on into the GTI and the Rabbit.

Most of the work is speedometers.

The early Volkswagens and the early Porsches also share some parts, which is worth knowing if you own one. A good deal of what this shop has learned on 356 instruments since 1957 applies directly to a Beetle or a Bus from the same years, and the Porsche page covers that work in detail.

On a Vanagon the job is usually cleaning the mechanism, servicing the frame, polishing the magnet shaft, repairing the pot metal odometer drive, lubricating and calibrating back to stock, and sometimes a new odometer drive gear. A full restoration runs further: mechanism cleaned, plastic bearing serviced, magnet shaft polished, plastic gear replaced, everything lubricated.

We have also had a Vanagon in with a full set of Porsche 964 instruments, fitted by RUF when the van was built and made to read the van rather than the car they came from: the 1988 RUF Vanagon.

Beetles come in with fuel gauge and speedometer trouble more than anything else. On the fuel side the fix is often a new fuel coil.

Karmann Ghias are generally a full restoration job. They also carry a Kienzle clock, and those get converted to quartz.

Aston Martin

The V8, the DBS V8, the DB4, the DB6 and the Virage. More DB6s than anything else.

These run Smiths mechanical speedometers, and the work on them follows a pattern: clean the mechanism, service the frame, polish the magnet shaft, repair the magnet head, and more often than not replace the cross shaft gears, then lubricate and calibrate back to stock.

The DB6 is much the same, though more of it is outright repair than restoration. New brass fittings and brass bushings are routine.

On a DB4 we have rebuilt the fuel gauge coil, where the usual culprits are broken wires or solder that has given up. Fuel trouble is not always in the gauge, though. On the car side the senders go bad, and when that happens we have a new sender cut and then calibrate the gauge to it, so that the two agree.

Smiths electric clocks fail as well, and those we can update.

As with most of what comes across the bench, speedometers and odometers are the bulk of it.

One thing is changing. We are seeing a great deal more custom work on the DB6 and the V8 than we used to, owners wanting something other than the dial the car left the factory with. That starts on the restoration, repairs and customization page.

Triumph

Mostly TR4s and TR6s, along with the TR3, TR3A and TR250, the Spitfire, and a couple of Heralds. On the bike side, the 650s and the Bonneville.

Speedometers are the common complaint, but tachometers are a larger share of the Triumph work than they are on most cars. Either way the job runs much the same: clean the mechanism, service the frame, polish the magnet shaft, repair the magnet head, charge the magnet, then lubricate and calibrate back to stock. The magnet heads take a lot of damage on these, and pot metal gives trouble the way it does elsewhere.

The rubber dash gaskets perish with age, and we supply new ones.

The thing we are asked for most often now on the TR4 and the TR6 is a conversion from mechanical to electric. Depending on what the owner wants that means a new coil or a stepper motor, calibrated to the car. It has become a very common request.

De Tomaso

The Pantera, the Mangusta and the Longchamp. We have done the whole range on these: clocks, amp gauges, speedometers and tachometers.

Clocks are a large part of it. The original quartz clocks go bad on Panteras and we fit new ones. On the Mangusta and the Longchamp the work has run to replacing the quartz clock circuit board, replacing the plastic motor gear, and cleaning the face and hands.

We also build new Veglia Borletti quartz clocks outright, and those can go into the original housing or into the white plastic housings.

The tachometers are the interesting ones. They need different circuit boards depending on the car, because these did not all run the same ignition system, and the wrong board will not do the job. We have worked out which board belongs in which car, which comes from having enough of them come through the door.

Lamborghini

The Miura, the Espada, the Islero, the 400 GT, the Urraco, the Jalpa, the Countach including the 5000 QV and the SV, the Diablo and the Murciélago. And, as it happens, Lamborghini tractors.

The work varies more here than almost anywhere else on this page, because the span does. On a Diablo we have replaced a speedometer LCD that had failed. On a Countach 5000 QV downdraft we fitted a new meter coil in the tachometer. On the Murciélago it has been mileage programming and data transfers rather than mechanical repair, which is what that generation of car asks for.

Jaguar

A great many Jaguars, and E-types above all, which are the XKE in the States. Also the Series 3 E-type V12, the C-Type, the SS1, the XK120, the Mark IV saloon, the Mark II, the 3.4 Litre, the 340 and the XJS. Restorations and repairs both.

The speedometers are Smiths: clean the mechanism, service the pot metal frame, polish the magnet shaft, replace the cross gear, repair the magnet heads.

Tachometers are where Jaguars get specific. Some E-types run camshaft driven electric tachometers, and we calibrate those. We also convert RVI tachometers to RVC, which means a new movement and a new circuit board. The RVI is the current sensing type and the RVC is voltage triggered.

We have also worked on gauges from other European cars, Maserati, Lotus and Fiat among them, for restoration, repair and customization alike. If your car is not named anywhere on this page, that does not mean we cannot help. Send us an inquiry and tell us what you have.