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I've seen a few of these Barnacle Accessory gauge panels listed on ebay over the last couple of years. They look like they should be a nice way to add a couple of extra gauges without changing the original look very much, and without looking too much like an afterthought.

I narrowly missed out on this one last week.


http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Austin-Morris ... true&rt=nc

They seem to go for around the 100 pound mark, which is getting pretty pricey for me with the postage to Australia figured in, so I'm wondering if anyone has a picture of one fitted? It would be embarrassing to spend a lot of pounds only to find that the panel doesn't fit very nicely or looks really bad.

thanks
Tim

I will try & find a pic, I certainly have at least one somewhere. These panels do fit very nicely & look fine. The only slightly odd thing about them is the size of gauge they use, I would estimate them to be about 1 1/2" they are certainly a lot smaller than the normal mini gauges. £100 is right at the top of what I would think it was worth. May be better to look at making your own version.

M

Would be great if someone made repros of these - they are pretty cool. Narrowly missed out on one a while back on ebay - I wasn't at home when the bidding ended and lost it by a tenner iirc.

Thanks Mark, I'd be very interested in a picture if you, or anyone else, can find one. I've thought about making one, it might be a nice project, but it hadn't occurred to me that the gauges were smaller than the usual 2" size. I'd need to find a couple of vintage looking gauges in 1 1/2" diameter, but at least then I could have oil pressure instead of amps.

There's also a smaller, single gauge panel that comes up on ebay occasionally.



Tim

Does anyone have information on what the white part in the middle is? I'm curious also what the toggle switch is for and the red warning light.

The white part in the middle is a small 2-pin plug, many years ago people would wire their parking lights into that so they could just unplug it & put it away in the mornings. I imagine the switch & warning light are whatever you wanted to wire up to them, maybe a reversing light, which has to have a warning light if not operated automatically.

I was going to use the plug in the middle for powering modern gadgets. It would be easy to make up an adaptor usin a cigarette lighter style of socket or just directly wire the correct type of plug to the various modern chargers we seem to drag around with us now.

You have to watch them though! The two pins are the same diameter so it is possible to reverse the polarity, no big deal for a parking light - but could "blow the arse" out of modern electronics. I planned to use a rectifier to ensure that the power socket always has correct polarity.

Park lights weren't required over here, but one of the "quaint" British features of my Traveller is the socket previously wired in under the dash.

Tim

I just 'won' this one. I don't really want an ammeter, but it was fairly cheap.



That textured aluminium is interesting, it looks like the back of a piece of masonite painted with silverfrost paint.

Tim

The gauge arrived today. They really are very small. The diameter of the body is about 1 9/16" (40mm). It looks like the ones used in early motorcycle headlights.

Tim

I was only a 1/16th out in my guess then

M

Yes, lift your game.

They're a good size really, scaled down to suit the Mini.

Tim