Hi folks...the needle is original and I had to adapt it to fit on the metric sized shaft of the speedometer unit. The center section of the dial is actually not original but as close to the original look as possible. It is really just a face plate I created and had printed by Kinko's/Fed Ex on color laser paper. The original center spot was cut out for the original odometer. The decal should be at the top of this section in a "sticky" along with gauge decals I provided a couple of years ago. Then I cut the bottom ridge off of a soda pop can and trimmed it to make the trim ring, polished that a bit with MAAS polish, split it, carefully pushed it over a shot glass until I got the diameter I wanted and glued it in place with some clear silicone. Yes, the little window is for the digital odometer/trip odometer. I looked far and wide for a digital GPS speedometer with a mechanical odometer, however I couldn't find one. Well, there is one, but it came in a mid 90s S10 truck and wasn't a GPS unit. I had hoped to create a more exact copy of the original speedometer with GPS technology, but apparently today's designers consider wheel-based mechanical mileage counters about as useless as floppy disks. As for illumination, I copied the original speedometer case using the 2 snap-in bulbs on either side of the speedo unit, so it looks original at night. As for the little odometer rectangle, in the daytime the numbers show black against a grayish background. At night the light from the 2 light bulbs transmit through a clear plastic disk on which the aluminum face plate I made is attached. That causes the little rectangle to light up also so you can see everything there easily. I thought about making this a project with step-by-step accounting of all I did but I didn't because (a) I'm sort of tired of doing that. I've done lots of those projects here and none of them have become tech-tips. That means they get buried and then people can't find them. Just like the speedometer work I did in the past, intermittent wipers, the carburetor work, rebuild your seat sliders, repair your headlight switch, install window rubber, etc. All that stuff vanishes and is left for people to search for. And (b) this wasn't easy. I had to create a new speedometer case unit and I had to modify the one from China quite a bit. I have decided to buy another Chinese GPS speedometer and see about creating a unit which could be simply installed into the original speedometer case, however. If you have more questions, please let me know.
~ Jon 1952 1/2 ton with 1959 235 | T5 with 3.07 rear end
