LAS VEGAS, NV — If you read through our post on the 2023 SEMA New Products Awards winners, you probably saw the name Intellitronix.
The Ohio-based Intellitronix folks took home the Best New Interior Accessory Product Award for 2023, thanks to their new RGB (Red, Green, Blue) LED Gauge Cluster made specifically for the A/G-Body 1978-88 Chevy El Camino or Monte Carlo.
And it was well deserved: In addition to being an easy, drop-in functional gauge upgrade—the panel is downright gorgeous, allowing you to switch colors to best suit your ride’s visual aesthetic.
To get more details behind this newly-minted award winning gauge package, we spoke with Phil Misch, CEO/President of Intellitronix. Here’s what he had to say.
“It’s RGB, so it’s got 30 pre-set colors, but you can go in and program it, move hue ratios around, for any color you want.”
We asked Phil about compatibility with various stock and aftermarket fuel tanks, transmissions, etc., and he gestured to a small black box (about the size of a VHS cassette) resting atop the show display.
“We call it the ‘Brain Box’ and what this thing does is it takes any signal coming into it, doesn’t matter what it’s coming from—electronic transmission, anything—and it’ll do a lot of filtering and spit out what the dashboard needs.”
So you plug your various sending unit connections into the remotely-mounted Brain Box and it’ll shoot all those signals to the dash via a single ethernet cable.
We dug deeper into the compatibility question with Phil as well. “It’s for a Monte Carlo, so it’ll have a 0-90 ohm fuel gauge sender. But a lot of folks have aftermarket tanks and senders too. Those folks can go in and set their own ohm levels and fuel range.”
And Phil also mentions that this gives Monte Carlo and El Camino owners the ability to add gauges that perhaps didn’t come stock, making the cluster a pretty smart functional upgrade as well.
Finally, we wanted to know about the install process, and more importantly, what’s included with the gauge cluster kit.
“You get the Brain Box, the wire harness, all the sending units, and the dash. You [mount the cluster in the dash] and then you run the wire harness through the firewall and connect all the senders. Then you plug in the Brain Box to the wire harness and up to the dash.”
And Phil stressed that the Brain Box can be mounted remotely too, making installation even easier.
“It’s waterproof, so you can put it in the engine compartment,” he says with a laugh. “You don’t have to crawl under the dashboard. Once you plug it all in, it’ll recognize the box and it’ll fire right up.”
So all told, if you’re looking for a a practical way to dress-up your A- or G-Body Chevy Monte Carlo or El Camino interior, this versatile gauge package is a great way to do it.
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In addition to several gauge cluster options for the 1978-88 Chevy El Camino/Monte Carlo, Intellitronix makes hundreds of direct fit gauge panel applications, click here to see them all.
OnAllCylinders is on-site in Las Vegas for the 2023 SEMA Show. You can click here to see all of our current SEMA Show coverage.
Something to put on a 1972 Riviera, Thank you