It’s the Little Details…

One of the objectives in converting the XJ-S is to maintain the stock interior; this means no digital gauges or EV displays anywhere.

On the downside, this means building circuits to make the tachometer work, the temperature gauge work, the oil pressure gauge display miles remaining, and the fuel gauge display battery SoC. (There will be a whole article dedicated to this later, but it will involve a Particle Electron, a lot of circuit design, and coding.)

In addition to the gauges, I wanted to have at least two switches to enable no/low/high regen, but I wanted them to look factory.

I decided to repurpose the non-functional “Heated Windows” switch, and the “Map Light” switch as low/high regen switches, however I could never leave them as they were…

I disassembled the switch and discovered that it’s a semi-transparent insert that has the writing on it. Some quick Googling, and I found a small print shop that would do transparency printing with a white base layer.

After re-creating the switch insert design in Adobe Illustrator, it was off to the printers!