A full-size, white-faced boost gauge is all well and good in your sporty Suzuki Cappuccino but when you need something a little more subtle why not choose the 45mm Lamco gauge you’re still lusting over 5 years after using it as inspiration for your Capp’s install? Perfect…

Although the steering-column-mounted Lamco gauges can often be found on eBay – they were seemingly quite popular on USDM Subarus – I found it much cheaper to purchase direct from Japan via Yahoo Auctions and the always excellent Jesse Streeter. This also meant I could pick up a spare steering column shroud for peanuts and, while I was at it, a replacement headlight for less than a lens renovation kit would’ve cost here in the UK!

I’d originally toyed with the idea of swapping the mechanical Lamco out for an electronic Omori but when everything arrived the gauge was in such pristine condition and looked so period-correct I decided to live with the extra hassle of running vacuum hoses through the firewall and the slightly chunkier hardware exiting the gauge pod. The placement of the driver’s side firewall grommet actually made it very easy to hook the gauge up to the 4WD system’s vacuum/boost supply and the whole setup sits so low in the engine bay that it’s barely noticeable. As with the Cappuccino’s install I also added a flow controller to get rid of any on-boost buzz.

Inside the car there wasn’t actually that much room on the column to place the pod – luckily where it could go was pretty much perfect, though speeds below about 15mph are bit of a guess now 🙂 The pod itself was very easy to attach to the shroud using the screws and curved plate… once the shroud had been removed from the column, not an easy job!

For gauge illumination I kept things simple by having the gauge lit whenever the ignition is on. The ISO>Subaru adapter from my FMU install was the perfect place to splice in a connector for power without tampering with OEM wiring and is, as a stereo would be, accessory switched.

Every turbocharged (petrol?) car needs a boost gauge and the overall effect is exactly what I was looking for – super-tidy, low-key and period correct 🙂