Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026

If you have watched my videos on the Shade Tree Garage YouTube channel, one of the pet peeves on the interior of the car is my 4-unit gauge cluster.

Three of the gauges are Auto Gage gauges; I bought the very nice 3-gauge unit with the nice chrome bezel. And let me be clear — the Auto Gage gauges are EXCELLENT gauges. The one thing I wanted to add to the original three gauges is a vacuum gauge.

More than 40 years ago, I changed out a two-gauge cluster with a four gauge unit I bought from a J.C. Whitney catalog. Those gauges were 2-inch gauges, black faces with white markings. The unique part of these gauges was that the guages were adjustable — each gauge had a 30-degree tilt ring, which allowed you to tailor the way the gauge faces to give the driver a nearly straight-on view of the gauge.

And frankly, if I could find those same gauges on the present-day market, I would buy them. But they disappeared many years ago, well before the J.C. Whitney catalog disappeared.

Now 40 years hence, I didn’t want 2-inch gauges; I opted for larger 2-5/8-inch gauges. Autometer offers an affordable gauge line called the Auto Gage lineup. These gauges are good quality, but not the level of quality that commands top dollar.

Autometer sells a three-gauge cluster — water temp, oil pressure and voltage — in a very nice chrome bezel with necessary hardware to mount and plumb the gauges. The 3-gauge set looked great once mounted under the dash of my 55 Chevy 2-door wagon.

But like 40 years ago, I wanted to add a 4th gauge — vacuum. The problem I’ve run into is that the gauges I’ve purchased to go with the Auto Gage units is that the vacuum gauge doesn’t match the Auto Gage units. What’s more important to me is that the backlighting on the vacuum gauges (I’ve tried two different vacuum gauges — both have been generally unsatisfactory) is too dim; what use is a gauge if the backlighting isn’t bright enough to actually read the damn gauge??

The difference is that the original three Auto Gages have dial markings that are translucent — the backlighting lights up the entire dial, and all of the dial markings are extremely easy to read. WAY easier to read than the Autometer vacuum gauge or the Stewart-Warner vacuum gauge I’ve tried!

I paid a hefty price for an Autometer branded vacuum gauge; I was never happy with the backlighting, and later swapped it out for an older Stewart-Warner gauge that had only marginally better backlighting.

Now I had pretty much let go of actually finding gauge that matches the backlighting of the three original Auto Gage units. However, while browsing eBay today, I was searching for what vacuum gauges were available. Lo and behold, I found a Auto Gage branded vacuum gauge for sale, new. But is the dial have the same kind of translucent dial markings that make backlighting so effective on the other Auto Gage units?

I searched Google images, looking for a photo of an Auto Gage vacuum gauge that was backlit — and believe it or not, found one! And what’s better yet, the dial matches the dials on the other Auto Gage units! Its exactly what I was hoping to find! The gauge has a black bezel, but I have some excellent chrome paint that I can use on the gauge! I’m going to order the thing in the next week and replace the existing Stewart Warner vacuum gauge. FINALLY!

At any rate, I’ll shoot a video of the gauge replacement once the new one arrives.

DIMMING THAT SPEEDOMETER! My GPS-powered speedometer unit I use in the Chevy works great; however, at night, ,the display is way, way too bright. I’m sure there’s a way to dim it, I just haven’t found the manual to find out the magic key presses to accomplish that.

CHRISTMAS PARADE? WOOT!! Christmas parade coming up in early December! Going with a very similar design as last year; however, I’m going to use LARGE bulb LED Christmas lights, rather than miniature lights. I’m going to run the inverter on its own battery to make sure the lights say lit!