Foggy fuel and water temp gages

[Anbele]

Tried to research this topic before posting…oh well. So my fuel and water temp gage fog up from time to time…just very annoying. But not the big dials—speedometer and RPMs. Has anyone experienced this? If so, any fixing advice. I’m inclined to believe that the culprit is that the fogging gages don’t have adequate ventilation so moisture gets trapped in there….thinking of drilling some “extra” holes around the white plastic casing

[RRoller123]

We ALL experience this. It is one of Spider life's vast mysteries. Other than removing the gauges and replacing or treating the "glass" with an antifogging agent, no one has as of yet come up with a really simple solution. I will say that when I had my clock rebuilt years ago, whatever they put in there for a new "glass" does not fog up. Palo Alto Speedometer did that work.

[18Fiatsandcounting]

Similar to Roller's input above, I experienced this on all my Fiats when I was living on the East Coast. Especially with humid days where the temperature dropped in the evening, or in the early morning. As the day heated up, the condensation cleared. It's dry enough where I live now that I don't experience this anymore.

Vent holes might help, and I imagine special anti-fog glass would do the trick. Or even an anti-fog coating on the inside of the original glass. Like that stuff they sell for swimming goggles.

-Bryan

[aj81spider]

It's like oil leaks. You go through the 5 stages:

> Denial: You're stunned because you've never had a car that did this before.
> Anger: It makes you crazy that there doesn't seem to be a fix and you curse Italian engineers for their long lunches and easygoing lifestyle.
> Bargaining: You promise the Fiat gods that you'll get the car repainted if they make it stop
> Depression: You think about getting rid of the car and buying a nice new Accord.

Then you drive it and realize it's the most fun you've had in a car and you finally get to:

> Acceptance: It's part of the package of owning a Fiat Spider from the '70s, so you squint through the fogged up gauges and you put a giant piece of cardboard under it to catch the drips

[TheBender]

I had all of my gauges reconditioned and they are currently amazing (6 months now). Not sure if creating some vent holes vs. cleaning and putting new gasket/seals would work better. Maybe do vent holes in one and clean up and put a new gasket on the other and see which one works better. Here is a before and after with mine.

[Anbele]

TheBender…they do looked really nice…I did disassemble the gauges not long ago—polished the bezels to shiny aluminum—but I could not take apart either the water temp nor the fuel gauge…so for my next instrument cluster take off—upgrading illumination—I’d attempt the vent holes and follow up with results
A big thank you to everyone for their input.
Enjoy the ride!

[18Fiatsandcounting]

I had all of my gauges reconditioned and they are currently amazing (6 months now).

Bender, looks good, but it seems like your car doesn't go as fast with the new gauges.

Kidding, just kidding...!

-Bryan

[redcars]

On 2 of my cars I took the gauges apart and cleaned them. It is slow and tedious work. On the third I drilled vent holes. This was done a little over a year ago. The ones I cleaned still look good. The car that I drilled vent holes in has almost no improvement.
Now that things are almost back to normal who knows when I will get around to cleaning the last set of gauges.

[Anbele]

So I opted to replace the fuel and water temp gauges with the old style ones…the ones that have the Italian wording in it…no fog on them!
Word to the wise though, replacing the battery/charging red light on the tachometer with a LED light bulb will affect its “interaction” with the alternator, remaining “on” for a longer period of time after the ignition
So my recommendation is to replace only the backlight bulbs of the instruments, leaving all the “warning” lights with new incandescence type bulbs