Construction of KPH scale

During the winter of 2010/2011 I had little to do so I walked around in a cold garage and thaught that the instrument cluster looked pretty boring, so I decided to atleast give the instrument cluster frame a coat of fresh paint.
When I took it out of the cab and disassembled it, the orginial MPH scale showed up. You know here in Sweden the government insist that the most dominant scale needs to show KPH and therefor  some previous owner had put on a white and black sticker on top of the glass hideing the original scale.
I really belived that the original 50 ish stylish font was really good looking.



KPH stickers over the original MPH

Right about now the thaught was born, I wounder if there are anyone that manyfactures a rebuild kit or replacment scale for the KPH.
The WWW was investigated and I found a number of scalings for a numerous speeometers but NON for the 56 (one year only) styled speedometer. The only one I found was a company in Australia that could convert it to KPH but then it would only show 90 KPH as max. However on a youtube clip I found a truck that had a scaling showing 0 to 140 so that had to be an original KPH scaling, rare I tell you that.

Well when I came up with pretty much nothing, I asked myself how hard can it be??? to make one frome scrath myself.

Luckely I have access to CAD program thru my emploeer, in witch I work almost everyday so it was just figuring out how it should be modeled and manufactured.

I spent a few evenings infront of the TV, my family looked at that and I looked at the laptop, measuring the old one, modelling it in the computer, printing 1:1 scale models onto papers that I cut out and tried in the cluster housing, after manu back and forth it finally started to look proimising.



The design that got manufactured

A nice design where the od numbes where half sized compared to the even numbers,
however this one never left the computer

An earlie design with some humor. 120kph marking was replaced with
"SLOW DOWN". This would probably never be approved by the
government, so this also never left the computer.




Tried to assemble one of the mockups in paper.

Now to the question: How would I manufacture it?

Option 1: Was to water och laser cut thin aluminium sheets metal and then use screen print the bottom color and numbers. The advantage with this method was that I could get the numbers in flourecent paint (as the original one). But the post bending of the sheetmetal could damage the paint so this option was disgarded.

Option 2: I happened to get in touch with a guy at AtlasGruppen thru lucky circumstances. They actually had an equipment that could manufacture low series of instrument clusters backgrunds professionelly. Thay had this special technic where they could print the colors onto an aluminiumplate, then cut the contours with a small small mill and afterwards thye treated the aluminum plate in different solutions to clean and seal all the pors locking in the paint.

As this was a fun out of the ordinary days work I got a really good price.

A few weeks later a small package came into the mailbox. EXCITING.



Voilá

For assembly of the scaling into the instrument cluster see this Link

Speedometer

Mean while I was waiting for the KPH scales where being manufactured I went over the speedometer it self.

1. I started out by cleaning the mechanism carefully, 56 years of  dirt made the mountain of ear tops grew quickly.
2. The hardest part was to clean al the numbers on the odometer.
3. New glas to cover the instrumentation was necessary as the undersigned managed to drop the original glas on the floor so it scattered into 100 of pieces. Well a trip to the glazier and a day of wait I could pick up the new one for the terrifying amount of $8.
4. Bead blasting and painting of all the sheet emtal part was done. The inner part where painted semi gloss black and the visable frame was painted in a broken silver color with a set of clear coats on top. Same as the frame for the cab heater.
5. The gauge pointers also got their treatment. But how do you actually remove paint of such a small and fragile object as the temp and fuel gauge pointer. I choosed to put a thicker piece of paper between the guage pointer and the gauge scale and then gently stroke the pointers with a small piece of sand paper. It is a real work of patient but it is really worth it in the end. I found the paint in a hobby store. I choosed a really bright orange (warning) color and a red one that I mixed until I got something that was similar to the original paint.

Before



After

Assembling next:

New KPH scale, old one on top.

New bottom with 8 steps instead of the old with 10.

This is how everything finally turned out.




Final assembly



Inside the cab

I was really satisfied with how it actually turned out. I just have to remember that the odometer still showes miles. .

That´s it so far..

UPDATE 2014-09-01

I finally stumbled upon a factory stock kph scale speedometer on facebook. I must say my best guess above became quite close to the factory stock

Courtesy: Marcello Grangetto

Courtesy: Marcello Grangetto


Its pretty close, not perfect but close....


And finally after a very long time, I found the youtube clip that started the whole thing.

Check out the speedometer at 1.00 and at 2.30.They do exist.....