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For car builders that really want that ultimate custom look, a complete set of custom designed gauges really highlight the interior of any car. Auto Meter [2], the company that has a complete line of instruments for just about any car enthusiast’s personal tastes, has recently opened up their custom shop to the public.
The first place someone’s eyes fall when they look into the rolling piece of art you’ve created is the gauges. The one piece of the interior you, as a driver, spend the most time looking at is the instrument cluster. When done right, instruments can compliment the character of your vehicle. Tie it all together and it can be the difference between a finshed masterpiece and a casual weekend project.
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The Auto Meter’s custom shop [4] offers several basic options to get you started, then you are only limited by your imagination, or your custom car project’s theme, to create your masterpiece in the custom shop’s configurator program.
According to Auto Meter’s Joseph Mills, “we were getting more and more requests to do “one off” and custom instruments. While we’ve always worked with our customers to provide them the exact product they needed, there were limitations in what we could do and the process wasn’t as easy as it should have been. Well that ends now. We’ve built what we think is a pretty awesome way to create and buy exactly the instruments that your project needs. We’ve constructed this site from the ground up using some of the most sophisticated software available to give you the quickest and easiest way to visulaize and build the finest instruments in the world, in the exact style you want.”
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Let’s assume that you want to color match the gauges to your car’s paint. The Custom Shop Configurator currently has an option to have you paint the dial, pointer and retainer yourself if you’d like to match these exactly to your vehicle. When you order with this option, Auto Meter will automatically send out three of each of the components for you to paint and send back for screening and assembly. The online program has a color wheel tool which allows you to match an infinite amount of colors for visulaization purposes. You can imagine it, design it, then see it on the screen.
You may be wondering how long it takes to get your custom designed gauges. According to Auto Meter, you can expect each gauge set to be custom built to your specification and shipped out within 4-6 weeks of the initial order.