Gauges

[The Pirate]

Had a nice experience with the people at Faria Beede gauges recently. The tach and fuel gauge on my '06 1800 SR3 were not working properly - tach was stuck at 2300 and fuel gauge seemed overly optimistic. Discussion with local retailer went nowhere - "after a couple of years you can't even gets parts for them".

Went to their website where they have a repair program. Have to log in, describe problem, and get work order #. I wanted to have the original gauges repaired to keep the stock look. $200 to fix the two gauges, and turned around within about a week. Got them back in and yesterday was first chance to see them in action.

Thinking I will change out the bulbs to blue.

[mmwjr]

Glad it worked out for you, thanks for sharing.

[shrew]

Originally Posted by The Pirate

Thinking I will change out the bulbs to blue.

Gauge lights are red so you don't loose your night vision. I would strongly urge you to reconsider installing blue gauge lights.

[The Pirate]

I thought the blue did not impact night vision either. I'm aware of the red gauges for night vision, as well. I will go with the red if the blue wasn't similar in that regard.
Also, it amazes me that boat builders don't bury the gauges enough that they don't reflect all over the windshield like an unwanted "heads up" display. Bothersome.

Thanks for the input.

[shrew]

Yes, recently there has been a move to both blue and green. I've seen green gauges so I don't know how new green is. Green does allow you to see color variations much better than red.

I had a set of cokcpit lights (installed in the arch) that would toggle between white, red or blue. Red was significantly better at retaining night vision than the blue. so much so that I would leave the red lights on while underway at night, but would never consider the blue as a suitable option.

That is just my experience with one set of lights. I'll acknowledge that brightness plays a key role. Even bright red will kill night vision. So it may have been that the red in my specific lights weren't as bright as the blue? Maybe we can tolerate the red at brighter settings than blue?

[shrew]

Originally Posted by The Pirate

........... it amazes me that boat builders don't bury the gauges enough that they don't reflect all over the windshield like an unwanted "heads up" display. Bothersome.

Is there a dimmer on your gauges? You can make a 'hood' or a 'visor' like an baseball cap visor for the top of your gauges to reduce reflection. Even it is temporary with some paper and tape.

[The Pirate]

No dimmer on the gauges that I've seen. Googled "red lights night vision" and found this whole big thing where someone contacted the car cos. to explain why they use what they do.

BMW spoke about the frequency of light waves, rods and cones in your eyes (red). Toyota went with more of a "feeling" of comfort, security in their reasoning (green).

Like your idea of a hood.