Today I met with Steve, the former owner of the GTI. He's on his way to Italy for four years, which sounds incredible. Steve passed on several things he thought I might find useful. The swag included a junkyard set of VDO gauges, swiped from a VW Cabriolet: oil pressure, oil temperature and voltage. Perfect!
I stuffed them into an ebay gauge holder. It was $19.99 and fits perfectly into the dashboard where the stereo used to be.
I soldered up the wiring to the gauges, labelled the wires with my Brother labeller and tested the gauge's light bulbs on my desk. one was blown, I pulled the bulb and it's holder apart (they were soldered together) and may be able to MacGuyver a solution if I can find a replacement bulb. The alternative is an $11 mail order bulb. Which is exactly $11 more than I paid for the gauges :) .
Samsara is the Buddhist term for rebirth or renewal. Around here we call that process "ebay". Those seeking enlightenment can look to ebay for my spare gauges in a couple of weeks.