Bluebird
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of custom-color gauges. For years, I resisted. I didn’t offer them, I charged tons for color changes, and I told myself that I didn’t like them. And… well… they kinda sucked. I didn’t have my technique down.
Now I got it down. And all those other excuses just evaporated. I’m really enjoying making gauges in color, and I can finally say that I’m very good at it. The quality is every bit as high as my black-face gauges.
Here are a few different Version Warbird custom orders. I realized that all of them sorta fit together, so I thought I’d put them all in a blog post together.
Bluebird
Bluebird tach
This was a replacement set of gauges. A customer from years back had a face start to self destruct. I made him these to replace the bad ones made out of poor materials. I change my materials pretty often and am always trying new stuff. The materials I’m using right now are incredible.
These turned out quite nice. The Warbird design really lends itself to different colors.
In the shadows.
The color was not easy to shoot. It’s very subtle and dark.
Bluebird at night.
Like stars coming out.
Green Scale
Major numbers and text in white, all the rest in green.
I’ve never received this particular request before. The custom color was to be applied to the scale instead of the face. VERY cool idea! It took a bit to find a green that was bright enough to balance between the black face and white numbers. You can see the results for yourself.
Modern tach face.
A fresh look.
The green GLOWS at night.
Perfect illumination
Warbird Sunk My Battleship
Warbird in battleship grey
This order came from a Version Rossa owner. He wanted to change his look a bit and came up with this idea – Warbird in battleship grey. This color request took me a bit. There’s an amazing amount of variation in shades of grey. Battleship seems to be a bit more green than most grey. And a bit darker.
Getting to combine black numbers and white tick marks really made me smile. Black white and grey are a hard to beat combination. And something I’ve never seen done on gauges.
There’s a lot of green in that grey.
The color shifts at every angle.
Pounds of fuel remaining.
The night glow.
Ghosted numbers.
Warbird at Tiffany’s
Automotive jewellery.
Saving this one for last. The request was a set of Warbird NB gauges with a Tiffany blue tach and custom logo. Fortunately, I have a bunch of little blue boxes around the house, so matching the blue wasn’t difficult. And the results… I honestly was stunned when I got these in the cluster for pix. They turned out far better than I had dreamed. And, again, I can safely say that I’ve never seen gauges like this. They are very much one-of-a-kind.
I seriously have the best customers in the world. I couldn’t come up with half this stuff on my own. But I get these orders, get to chat with awesome people, and then make them THIS sort of thing. Life is truly good.
Tiffany blue.
Classy.
Love this.
Blue-lit.
My work here is done.
What next? I can’t wait to find out.
Thank you once again Adam! Your work is outstanding!
My pleasure!
Wow, I immediately fell in love with the warbird at Tiffany’s. You don’t ship to Germany, do you
?
Greetings from a German fan of your Blog
Jan
I just realized that you do ship to Germany
woohoo, next month I might order this lovely Tiffany warbird 
Yes sir! I ship everywhere. If a shipping service allows it to go somewhere, I’ll use it.
And any time you wanna order, I’ll help you out.
Warbird does lend itself to a bit of designer colour. It is very much like a classic watch. You know the ones that are hand built and retail for $10000 plus.
The photography is really excellent and shows the care you put into your work!
WOW! Thank you for that comparison. Though I don’t think I’d sell too many at $10k.
Those ghosted numbers on the battleship ones are gorgeous. All these options are going to make my choice much more difficult, in a good way.
Wow, amazing job. Outstanding! :O
Someone should get some gauge faces with yellow letters, like the Porsche 944 Gauges : http://i80.servimg.com/u/f80/18/27/47/72/20120910.jpg
I’m personnally still thinking about what I’ll do on my car, but seeing those gauges, I thought this design could fit greatly some Miata interiors.
Better pic : http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g261/Twerp129/Gauges.jpg
Love the warbird technicolor. I’ve got a black LE with the red interior and wanted to something interesting. Could you do the scale in red, dial in black with white numbers?
Of course! And I have a red that’s a very good match for the LE interior. Hit my order form if you’d like me to do this.