Installing highly accurate, nonstock gauges has been a part of hot rodding since the earliest days, from aircraft surplus stuff in the '40s and '50s to the radical designs from the aftermarket that are available today. But just wiring a set of gauges into your hot rod does not by itself make it any different from the rest of the crowd. What if you could create your own gauge layout and design custom faces that match your car? Well, you can-Redline Gauge Works can take pretty much any design idea and turn it into reality.
The custom gauge cluster in the Pure Vision-built Hammer Road Runner.
Redline's Shannon Hudson has been working with factory and aftermarket gauges for about 20 years and is the go-to source for many of the top hot rod builders in the country. His clients include Chip Foose, Jay Leno, and Steve Strope, among many others, but he also welcomes work from average Joes.
We went to Redline for a custom installation of gauges in the dash of our Pontiac Ventura project (more on that one in the near future) to see how Hudson goes about designing these setups and also to show some of the radical clusters he's done for other customers (see the photos on this spread).
The Foose Coupe gauges, modeled after an Oakley watch.
Besides the custom designs, Redline also updates stock gauges to far more accurate modern electronics (for those who want to retain the stock look), adds factory optional gauges to nonoptioned clusters, and does basic repairs. The company also specializes in custom-printed face designs. The sky's the limit, really. The price is, of course, dependent on how wild you want to get. For our Ventura setup shown here, Hudson said it would cost $1,800 if he sold the gauges as part of the deal (he gets a killer deal on VDO and Auto Meter gauges and can therefore sell them at competitive prices). Basic repairs to factory gauges run $180 to $200, while a full-blown restoration (repair the artwork on the faces, fix the case, modify the circuit board for accuracy, and more) costs about $800.
