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Instrumentation Conumdrum

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APM

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In addition to my electrical problems my 3000 Mk1 BT7 has back faced instruments which look like those from a later BJ8 (speedo & Tacho are Jeager, fuel and oil/water are Smiths)- I can feel the purists recoiling in horror! Anyway I'm thinking of replacing them with the correct white-faced instruments and find that some suppliers have good exchange programs; I mentioned the Jeager to a supplier and he told me that Healey's never had Jeager, always Smiths. I looked in John Heilig's book Austin Healey 100& 3000 and the caption on page 112 states "BJ8s used more modern Jeager instruments, the style of which is still used in 1995-era cars." Did they ever use Jeager instruments and do they have any exchange value?

Secondly, I was looking at Original Austin-Healey to see what the correct instruments should be and notice that there are 3 beautiful close ups on page 80 - two have the speedo on the right and one has it on the left (all RHD cars) - I'm a little surprized the books experts didn't spot this. Cross checking with the Heilig book shows all speedos on the left with the exception of the picture on page 32 - but I think this could be a reversed negative of a right-hand drive car - but the position of the needles in this picture make no sense to me either way (both pointing towards the steering wheel). My Clymer handbook shows the speedo on the left for a LHD and on the right for a RHD. I'm assuming Clymer's right, what do you think?

Hope you find this somewhat diverting. Many thanks, APM
 
I have a 1960 BN7 with the same instrument package as your car originally. It is all Smiths, with small oil/water gauge on the far left, then the Speedometer, then on the right side of the steering wheel are the Tachometer (cable driven from the distributor) and on the far right the fuel gauge. The faces are gold but the Speedo and Tach have black inner centers. None of the gauges are white faced.
 
That's interesting, I understand the black inner center but I didn't know about the gold varient, you don't think it's discoloured white?
 
No it is very and uniformly gold. Check with someone else though, to be sure.
 
Thanks TimK, I see what you mean, I had seen one like that in Original Austin Healey and just thought it was discoloured white. Do you think they were special order or standard?
 
I am confident that these were standard, but there are a lot of other experts out there that could confirm this.
 
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