If like me you own one of the older Fords then you may find that you have to settle for the minimum of instrumental information...usually in the form of a rev counter, speedo, fuel guage and water temperature...

...A key ingredient to any engine is its lubrication and apart from checking your dipstick on a regular basis there is another way to keep a watchful eye on oil levels...and without getting covered in it!

An oil pressure guage provides a useful insight into the health of your engine in as much as you pretty much know there is no oil leaking out of an orifice you cant see on your engine. We fitted this one to a MKII XR2 in place of the now pretty much unused speaker fader joystick...(anyone who owns an XR2 will know exactly what I mean!)

Although we are not mad keen on the following company's leads and plugs we actually like the guages they provide and on a looks and cost basis we are very impressed with what you get...

The Splitfire guages come with bulb, fitting bracket, 3 colour filters to match the backlight to your dashboard lights and the oil cable and fittings to connect to the sender. (NOTE: We had to buy an additional adapter to split the existing sender into two to keep the oil warning light functional!)

After removing the old joystick fader and removing the trusty bit of plastic trim we went about making up an aluminium plate to cover the front reccess and to strengthen the plastic as we knew we would be cutting a lot out from the plastic itself.

As you can see once the plate was cut and smoothed to the desired shape and finish, the appropriate hole was cut in the middle to make way for the guage itself...

...After offering everything up we paid a quick visit to our friends at Torque Interior Design who gave our new bit of trim a covering in black Bridge of Wier leather and it really brought it all together (as can be seen below)

After cutting and drilling the bracket that held the joystick there previously we mananged to get the new occupant to fit. This did take a bit of fiddling but was worthwhile.

With the guage secured and checked to ensure it fitted correctly we then proceeded to run the backlight bulb to the light relay to ensure it came on when the lights were turned on and only then.

After that, all that was left to do was run the copper pipe through the bulhead (which thankfully is just behind this location - convenient we will agree, otherwise drill a hole and use a gromit) After running the copper pipe we unscrewed the oil pressure sender and screwed in the new two way block as previously mentioned...Reconnected the old sender and the new block for the guage and the job was done...

A little extensive agreed but we now have a fully working backlit fuel pressure guage, treated to a spread of leather and without chopping the dash or adding pods anywhere...We will leave you to make up your own mind but we think it looks rather good!