Back in Sept I bought a set of dual stopwatches for the dash of the '58 beetle. Technically a classic rally car would have a watch and a stopwatch...but hey, I haven't found a matching watch yet. Long story short, while the mounting plate would work in the traditional mounting location (radio delete plate), I need to keep that area clear for a future item. So at some point I'd need to modify the plate. But first...
When a great friend of mine saw that I was starting to add some historic rally look to the car, he commented that I need a tripmeter. He's not wrong, but period correct trip meters are SUPER expensive. While I was visiting last week, this came out of his vast collection:
It's a very early Danish rally odometer known as a Hemo Trip Taeller. The odometer has two hands, much like a clock. The longer hand rotates on the outer dial. One revolution is a kilometre, so you can accurately measure to 0.05 kilometres. The inner dial, and smaller hand does 30km in one full revolution, so hopefully the rally master has an end of leg and/or ODO zero before then!
I
think based on the very limited info I have, that this is a first-generation unit, from 1960. Later models have dots every 0.01km, and a mounting system that allows for putting it flat on the dash.
Back to the stopwatches...
After a lot of machining and polishing, I duplicated the mount for the stopwatches, but with a clearance channel for the dash trim on the beetle.
Here's both items mounted up:
And the Hemo lights up with the headlight switch:
I've never mounted the sun visors on my car, as its an early-build '58. I found evidence out of Europe that it may have come with the single driver-side visor like a '57 oval, but it's probably unlikely. The dual '58 set I have were pretty gross looking, so I tried out that vinyl die that's like spray paint. I need to see if it's available in ivory, not the white I used...but I'm surprised at how well they turned out.
And lastly, a little art project:
