Here is what I've used for the dashboard and the gauges.
I'm using the radio and climate control interface from a 96-99 Taurus.
I happened to acquire a SHO for its 3.4L 32-valve all-aluminum v8,
and took a lot of parts off it I will be using.
The Ford oval radio/control interface is quite nice.
Nice big buttons. It also has just the buttons up front, the actual radio and amp is a seperate unit that goes in the trunk, which means the weight is kept lower, and who is going to steal a stock ford radio?
The interesting part is that I replaced the SHO control unit that controls the climate buttons with the unit without them (or a tape deck), so it has just the upper radio buttons. Then I used the full button interface, but used just the lower buttons connected to my own microhardware. So I use these buttons for whatever, and replaced their faces with my own symbols.
I don't use an ignition key, but a button to power-up, and then you must enter a password to enable the engine and be able to start it.
I replaced the climate display with a 16x2 lcd, which does the prompting,
and also displays the RPM when the engine is running.
For the rest of the dash, I'm using a 40x4 LCD I had in my parts bin, it works quite well in fact, very visible and using custom chars I've bargraphs for the fuel, temp, volts, and oil pressure, and large numbers for the MPH and the MPG. This is a nice compact package to display the info.
And since my micro handles all this, I'm also encorporating a MPGuino type MPG into the display, reading the fuel injector pulses. To get the MPH,
the Samuri 5-speed has no speedo, I put a hall-effect sensor on the differential to get the driveshaft rotation signal. I use a micro to read this and the fuel level sensor, and transmit the data wireless to the dash processor, which also transmits the brake, light and turn signals to the processors running the tail lights.
