NA6 & NA8 Installation Instructions
NA6 NA8 Instructions
These Instructions apply to ‘90-93 and ‘94-97 kits. The kits have essentially the same assembly method, but flexing the upper portion of the tombstone cover is required to match the contours of the NA8 Dash.
Please read all steps before beginning assembly!
Some Tools you will need:
2.5mm or 3/32” Drill Bit or smaller
Allen Keys
Screw Driver (for tombstone removal)
Dremel tool with cutting disk (not required, but helpful)
Tape or wood clamps
Step 1: Remove the Tombstone from your Car
As you can see, my NA8 tombstone is already drilled. Several prototype iterations were needed for the NA8 kit design, so there are multiple “moved” holes. .
Step 2: Clamp or Tape your tombstone cover to the tombstone with correct alignment
Line up the bottom of the vent and hazard-button cut-out contours, as well as the edges of the tombstone. Measure twice, cut once! Take time to ensure the alignment is correct, as you really won’t want to re-drill your tombstone if it is slightly off.
My kit has “X”s on it to make sure I don’t sell this non-functional prototype to someone by accident!
You will notice on NA8 kits that the tombstone cover does not sit flat on the tombstone.
This is by design. You will want to align the flat portion on the bottom and drill those holes (up to the holes just below the vents, then flex the top portion towards the tombstone so the top holes can be drilled.
Step 3: Drill your holes, starting from the middle and working your way out.
You need to use a drill bit smaller than the 3mm diameter screws provided to ensure the threads can grip the tombstone plastic.
2.5mm or 3/32” will both work great.
I recommend starting by drilling the two holes shown with screws inserted in the picture to the left. The reason for starting here is that there are many contours near this area, and ensuring proper fitment here will ensure that everything else will line up as you progress.
(NA8 Only:) Do not drill the top four holes just yet.
As you drill holes, insert screws to make sure the cover doesn’t slide around during the process.
Note: You are screwing into plastic. Use your best judgement as to how tight these screws should be. You could use rivnuts for this application to ensure longevity, but I have had my dash kit installed for three years and believe rivnuts to be overkill. That being said, one of my screws did strip the hole in the tombstone. Use caution and prevent over-tightening.
Step 3.5: Flex the top of the tombstone cover back, drill, and screw
This step only pertains to NA8 dash kits. The curvature of the upper tombstone was the biggest challenge when adapting this kit to the NA8 car. NA6 owners, go have a beer or a snack or something and come back for step 4.
This difference between NA6 and NA8 kits was a major challenge while designing this kit.
After inserting all of the lower screws, clamp, tape, or have a buddy flex the tombstone cover to match up to the tombstone before drilling these holes. Thread them in together, a few turns at a time, so that the springing force from the cover is not concentrated on any specific screw. You want to evenly apply pressure across all four screws together.
Do NOT tighten the top corner screws all the way!
Not only is the tombstone rounded top to bottom, but is also rounded around the vertical axis. If you flex the dash around this vertical axis, your screen will NOT fit in the bezel, due to some fancy math term such as “geodesic” or “arc length” or something….
Regardless, there should be about a 1/4” gap between the tombstone and cover at the screw location. Just make sure your cover is not warping around the vertical axis.
This gap is insignificant visually, and is not noticeable from the cockpit of your race machine.
Step 4: Sandwich the screen bezel on the tombstone cover between your screen and the 3D printed screen spacer
NA6 Owners, you can come back now
Place the 3D printed screen spacer behind the screen bezel on the tombstone cover. At the bottom of this piece is a wire pass-through and two mounting holes. The screen is inserted from the front and the spacer and screen sandwich the aluminum tombstone cover.
After ensuring the screen fits with the spacer, use a pencil to trace the wire-pass through from the screen spacer onto the tombstone, and the location of the two spacer mounting-holes. Then, use a dremel cutting wheel or drill to copy this cutout onto your tombstone.
With a dremel, I recommend drilling two large holes (1/4”-1/2”) at either end of the pass-through location, and connecting these holes with a dremel to create a slot. You really only need a large enough hole to fit a ribbon cable and two wires (power and ground)
Then, re-install your tombstone and insert the two screws as shown in the picture on the left.
Step 5: Route Wires through Pass-Through and Behind the Tombstone
You will need an extended ribbon cable (1.5' feet or more). I mounted my raspberry pi behind the oem radio location. There is a metal bracket here that is perfect for bolting a raspberry pi case to. I also mounted a headless bluetooth amp in this location so that my sound system could be completely controlled by my phone.
Step 6: Mount your screen!
Be very careful not to over-tighten the screws that hold the screen to the dash kit assembly. The screen is laminated with glue and I assume (it hasn’t happened to me) that if these screws are too tight, and your dash is baking in the sun, the screen has a possibility to de-laminate. You really just need a quarter turn or less past finger-tight on these four screws. Again, I have not heard of this happening, and my screen has been installed for three summers now with no issues.
Other tips:
Your raspberry pi, aside from showing live engine data with tunerstudio, can be used for apple carplay, android auto, telemetry logging, gps, pretty much anything you can imagine. I’ve included some links on how to setup those programs below!
Better Looking TunerStudio Dashboards