Midnight Shift

So, after telling myself that I would just do a flocked dash on my S13 coupe, I found a sweet deal that I couldn’t resist. A full S15 dash with lower panels, glove box, etc...AND instrument cluster on Yahoo Auctions Japan for 4,000 yen (about 50 USD!!!!!!!) I said...forget the flock...I’m going S15 stock...foo....

So, after getting my dash (super sweet condition! even came w/ airbag!! But I’ll throw that out...) I was looking into remedies that people have found for what to do for instrumentation. I was thinking about using the S15 instruments but I didn’t want to spend too much money for a speed signal modifier to get the speedometer to work, and I don’t have the pigtail connectors for the S15 instruments!

So, I decided that I would have to just find out a way to put my S13 instrument cluster into the S15 dashboard. I figured it was the easiest for a plug and play setup.

NOTE: You will lose the fuel-warning-lamp function, the battery-warning lamp function, and the fuel and temp gauge back lighting. (you can always figure out something with the lighting though.) But what isn’t without compromise, right?

Keep in mind, I wanted to keep this as “stock looking as possible” with no gaps around the bezel, etc.

You need:
S15 bezel and (optional clear cover)
S13 instrument cluster
Make your own trim to fit around the actual gauges.
And
Tools to cut through plastic (most of the S13 instrument cluster’s plastic is soft and really easy to cut with just a razor blade, so that’s what I used and it worked well.)


The main problem, is that the S13 cluster is too long to fit in to the S15 dash because there are barrier walls on both sides of where the cluster fits.



So, there are two solutions to this, cut the barriers, or cut the S13 instrument cluster to fit. I was thinking that the most logical way would be to cut the barriers on the dash, instead of Frankenstein-ing it all, but once I measured everything, the long S13 cluster would bump into the center vent’s box (3 center vents on the S15 dash) and I wanted to retain that box because I wanted my A/C and heater because Japanese winters are cold as xxxx and summers are hot and humid as xxxx. So, I ended up cutting up the S13 cluster to make it fit without cutting in to the dash.

Strip your S13 cluster of everything...you’ll also have to take off the electrical sheet on the back.


Take the S15 bezel and fit it over the S13 instruments. You can see the overlap of the S13 cluster and will have to cut out the over lap. Measure where you’ll have to cut. I cut out where the red marks are. Cut that ish.
Also, break off the S13 bottom L and R tabs.

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Then when I tried to fit it in the S15 dash, I realized I would have to cut more because it wouldn’t fit in smoothly....so these green lines are the actual cut lines.



This is what it should look like.


Put your S13 gauges back together and tape up the overlaying electrical sheet.



Now you'll see that your "new" instrument cluster will fit into the dashboard without any problems!!!


The next part is the hardest and most time consuming, but its not impossible. You'll need to make a new gauge overlay so that you only see the gauges and not the stuff going on in the cluster behind them. You'll have to Frankenstein the two S13 and S15 overlays to make your own. Then trace out your own template! S13.5 overlay action right here!


I actually messed this one up pretty bad...so I ended up going to the hardware store and getting 1mm acrylic glass and cutting my overlay out of that.


Here is the acrylic one that I busted out some dope manoeuvres with...Its not perfect, but I was very happy with the way it turned out!


And here it is all assembled!




Then I just made some brackets to put it all together! Here it is finished.