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'90 Burb Guages

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tfitch03

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I have a '90 v2500 burb and would love to replace the gigantic fuel gauge with a tach and perhaps the clock with a normal sized fuel gauge.

Did GM pre-wire my car for a tach (would it be a plug and play)? Has anyone ever done this? :confused::confused:
 
No, you would have to modify it to make it work. Definitely doable but takes some work.

Check out LMC and they have a repro large tach that you are after. I think they also sale the smaller gas gauge as well.
 
Thanks! Oddly enough, I am staring at my LMC catalog at this very moment.

I have been trying to track down what is popping my gage/idle fuse and have the dash out. I thought it may be a good time to address this mod.





 
The cluster is going to take a lot of work to fit a tach in it.

If you know what you are looking at, this will give you a clue of the problem you will run into:
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The cluster has NO provision for a clock in the original lower left position. I don't believe there are even any "bosses" for the screws to retain one. With a dremel you could cut down all the ribs that separate the various lights that were used in that location. You'd need to then wire it up outside of the circuit board. Tach location I believe will still work (the bosses appear to be there), but will have to cut the housing for it if you use a factory style one.
 
You are right on about the dremel. We had to do exactly what you mentioned. Only thing with ours is there is no light to the clock.



You can see my master dremel skills on the lower left of the picture.

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How did you fix the charge indicator lamp deal? That is actually part of the charging system, if removed, it can/will cause charging issues. Is that what the bulb holder is I see in that location?
 
dyeager535 said:
How did you fix the charge indicator lamp deal? That is actually part of the charging system, if removed, it can/will cause charging issues. Is that what the bulb holder is I see in that location?
Click to expand...

I don't recall doing anything special. The clock is wired to a separate circuit independent of the cluster. If i recall correctly, all we did was cut the hole for the clock and peal the printed circuit back so we could run the wires to the clock.
 
I can't recall position, but looks like you might still have the light installed in that spot, so no issues. Looks like it must clear, so thats good.
 
tfitch03 said:
I have a '90 v2500 burb and would love to replace the gigantic fuel gauge with a tach and perhaps the clock with a normal sized fuel gauge.

Did GM pre-wire my car for a tach (would it be a plug and play)? Has anyone ever done this? :confused::confused:
Click to expand...

On my 89 suburban, I used a tach and small fuel gauge off of an 85 dumptruck. Other mods are neccesary, such as adding sockets for the park brake light and seat belt light to work. If you can find the whole cluster used, I would go that route. All the wires in the connector from the dash harness are the same, so no rewiring has to be done, but the printed circuit is different and you will have to use your speedo, as it's electronic not cable driven.

There is also a small harness for the tach, to give it power and connect it to the distributor. The tach runs independant of the cluster itself.
 
just added a 78-87 oe tach and small fuel guage to my 90 blazer 350 tbi. fuel guage works fine. wired tach to gloshift tach filter. tach seems to be fine in idle but once you give it gas the tach jumps to 3500. can anyone please help me with this issue?:confused: got guages from classic industries.com $129for tach $49 for small fuel guage
 
I'd say try it without the filter, if it's still doing the same thing you probably have a bad tach.
 
Tall one said:
On my 89 suburban
Click to expand...

The '89 cluster is an entirely different casting. In your example (dumptruck cluster) probably easiest for the '90-91 owner to use just the tach/fuel gauge.

I'm pretty sure it is possible to fit the later speedometer in the earlier cluster, but would seem more work than just swapping the gauge in question. Stupid of me, didn't get a picture of the inside of the cluster where the speedometer goes. But if looking inside a 1973-1989 housing, you should be able to use this to guesstimate whether they changed the whole housing to accommodate the electric speedometer, or simply cast that box in the "normal" speedometer location. The PCB of the speedometer is every bit as large as that "box" GM cast into the housing.

picture.php
 
Anyone want a picture of what the inside of the stock '90-91 cluster looks like?

Can't help with the '89 and older clusters, but if someone can post that, should be fairly clear what work will be required to make the switch.
 
I put a factory tach in my 1990 Blazer, but I swapped to a mechanical speedometer (my doubler didn't have a VSS). I have a thread on here somewhere that has good pin out descriptions.

Martin
 
I never got around to putting the tach in my truck. I have some gremlin pop'ing the gage/idle fuse that has stalled all other work on it. I am going to re-attempt a fix this weekend after a long needed break from it. Saving up for the cummins swap as well.
 
Not sure if anyone wants them here, or in my own thread. If this is derailing the topic, let me know and I'll move this to my thread on the cluster re-wire.

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Clock area definitely a problem, IIRC how the tach mounts, looks like the bosses for them are cast, just not threaded. That would be an easy fix.
 
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