So my plan for this car is to utilise the 915 gearbox that I already have. I bought the box some 20 odd years ago to put in my Karmann Ghia along with the big Type 4 engine that's also getting fitted, but a change in direction has meant that it's been sitting around collecting dust waiting for an appropriate project to put it in. 

I've long been on the lookout for a Porsche 914 without an engine and gearbox to give me somewhere to use the big Type 4 motor that I originally built for the Type 34. But apart from taking a gamble and importing a project from the USA into Australia, 914's just don't come up for sale too often over here, and never as a reasonable car without engine and box. 

I found a cheap set of early 914 gauges on Ebay that were simply too cheap to pass up. The plan is to give them a bit of an overhaul and update the faces to match the original 356 style. The tacho on the 914 is slightly larger than the other gauges whereas on the 356 they are all the same size. Having seen 914 gauges fitted to other 356's it doesn't really notice too much. North Hollywood Speedos can convert these to look like 356 gauges but at some around AU$1k it would be cheaper to buy some reproduction gauges. The thing that has really turned me off of getting repro gauges is that the trip meter and odometer is a nastly little LCD screen. Yuk.

Made a start on the gauge faces today. I tuned down some bezels for the centre of the gauges. The bezels are to make the 914 gauges look more like the original 356 style of gauges. I made them out of aluminium stock which will polish up nice and easily. I spent a bit of time and cut out the individual odometer and trip counter holes on the speedo bezel. I also stripped and painted the gauge faces. Once the paint has had a chance to dry I will sand back the paint from the rim of the bezels and give it a bit of a polish. 

Sanded the faces back last night and offered them up. Pretty stoked with how they are looking so far. Just need to scale the decals and print them out. Not too sure how the green will look over the black face. Guess I will soon find out.

Finished off the gauges this evening. Scaled the fascias down to fit and printed out a few test prints. I initially tried to print onto transparent water decal paper but found that the ink was not vibrant enough and did not show up that great on the black background. This was a shame as the transparent decal paper works a lot better then the white.

So unfortunately I was forced to use the white paper so that the green numerals were visible. This had one unfortunate side effect - that the white edge of the paper was clearly visible in a few areas against the black background.