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My Custom one-off factory Gauges (UPDATED! Added Elec. Skematic)

snoman87 said:
Very nice job ... I just upgraded my 86' cluster with trip odometer speedo and seperate tach/fuel gauges ... now I am looking for this Tach/Fuel Gauge combo to fee up a spot for a boost guage.

Here is a tip for making the cluster brighter ... when you have it all apart, paint the inside with a chome spray paint. You can also paint the light blue back side of the plasitic guage cover (it's the one that goes between the guages and the clear plastic cover), if you do this the color will change a little, goes slightly orange due to the buld color. I am eventually going to white LED to get the white color back I will try to post a pic tomorrow
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I just ordered the LED's yesterday :D , I tried the chrome/bumper spray thing on another cluster for my C10, it does make it brighter, but that bumper stuff doesn't stick so well to the plastic, after a couple of months, it started flaking off. I did rough up the surfaces with sandpaper too before painting. I think the LED's will do it. Less heat too. These are the ones I ordered The WLED-W5 (W is for white). I'll post up the difference when I get 'em. I have the 194's in there now. Good, but could be better. Just cleaning the dust out of the inside helps a lot.
 
question. is it as simple as hooking up aftermarket guages in these trucks? my 78' has lights instead of guages. i have a fantastic bone yard 1 mile from me that has piles of 73-87 trucks and medium dutys. is there a lot of soldering and board work or is it mainly rewiring using the proper senders? do the guages come apart seperatley or do you have to cut them apart?(the little guys on the side) ... i called and they have serveral of the tach/fuels and one of the air guages. post back soon please if its not too difficult over autometers i'm going after them, they said 20 bucks and i can have any i want:eek1: plus i love the stock look.
 
you should be able to get the entire gauge cluster cheap.. i got one with the factory tach from car-part.com for $25 to my door..... so once you have that... then maybe goto autozone or a parts store and get the temperature sender for gauge, oil sender for gauge.. volt meter is volt.... speedo is just the cable.... fuel is obviously the tank senders so you dont need them either.. all in all..gauge clustertemp senderoil senderthat should be all ya needthe gauges come out... held in with small bolts.... 5/16 i think.....
 
ncgamedog said:
question. is it as simple as hooking up aftermarket guages in these trucks? my 78' has lights instead of guages. i have a fantastic bone yard 1 mile from me that has piles of 73-87 trucks and medium dutys. is there a lot of soldering and board work or is it mainly rewiring using the proper senders? do the guages come apart seperatley or do you have to cut them apart?(the little guys on the side) ... i called and they have serveral of the tach/fuels and one of the air guages. post back soon please if its not too difficult over autometers i'm going after them, they said 20 bucks and i can have any i want:eek1: plus i love the stock look.
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Aftermarket guages are not that simple ... you'd be better off installing a factory cluster with guages and the proper senders, your truck is already wired for it. Unless, you want full mechanical ... in that case go aftermarket and modify the cluster housing of dash cover. I'd go factroy cluster with tach.

When you buy the cluster for your truck would you concider purchasing another for me or give me the name of your bone yard?
 
In order to use a different factory cluster, you need to carfully map your old cluster, and new cluster, then re-arrange the pins in the connector on the back. If going from no-gauges to gauges, you'll need to buy different senders too, possibly adding a few more wires into the connector as well. Not hard, just time consuming and tedious work.
Point being, it's not just plug and play. I'm re-wiring my whole K5 from scratch anyway, no biggie for me, in my '86 C10, I did the no-gauge to gauge swap, took about 4 hours to do it right, not counting time cleaning the cluster or researching/buying senders.
Also the main cluster part (the plastic white part that all the gauges screw to) is important. They differ alot. You can't just slap any gauge in any position you want. The tach/fuel and air gauge unit is different from tach/fuel and idiot light, there are different numbers of tell-tail slots, the elec. speedo ones have a different opening in the back then the non-elec ones, the air gauge slot has extra screw holes, large right spot has a very different setup for tach or fuel or tach/fuel, so on and so fourth, just be aware of what your pulling. YOu should be able to get what you want.

I'd buy all the ones I could if your yard has a bunch of them, clean 'em up an bit, and sell 'em on ebay. A full cluster with tach/fuel combo on ebay (especially if you can test the tach, they are often bad and not working), sells for $200 and up....
 
73k5blazer said:
There was a factory tach option in the light-duty line, albeit it's not very common to see, but in the light duty trucks, when you got the tach, the fuel guage was placed where my air gauge is, kinda of wasting that space. The tach/fuel combo units were only found in medium duty trucks.
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That's how my 'Burb is. I like having the tach there but you are correct about the fuel gauge. A trans temp gauge would have been much better use of the space.:doah:
 
73k5blazer said:
I just ordered the LED's yesterday :D
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Got those LED's today. Plugged them in, they are brighter, looks really nice. I wouldn't say they are super bright. Clean, very white light too, instead of the yellowish light the incadecent bulbs give off. Only one problem though, they don't dim with the dimmer on the headlight knob. I plugged my 194's back in to ensure I had my makeshift wiring rig through my new headlight switch from my '70 Impala's battery (I have yet to wire my K5) was hooked up correctly.
Now I can't decide. Too many choices. I think I just might stick with the 194's, unless someone here reports a heat problem with them.
 
looky see what I got yesterday ... it's from a late 80's C60/C65 dump truck.

now I just have to get some white LED's

87_C70.JPG
 
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Check out my bad boy :)

After reading this post I got looking around for more info and sources. It's all ready to get installed now.

The cluster is from a 87' C60 dump truck. The white faces overlays are from whitegauges.net ... they customize the tach for my diesel's yellow and red line. If I was to do it again I would get "Diesel Fuel Only" between the fuel gauge and tach needle

post-1223-1143067637.jpg
 
Right now it's got the double air guage, which I am not using ... I was thinking of putting in the vacumm gauge and connecting that you my intake as a boost gauge ... or trying to fit a pyro gauge in somehow
 
how are you hooking up your tach? i've got a tach in my cluster (not stock) which isn't hooked up. the only thing i can think of is to put some kind of sensor on the harmonic balancer and have the balancer rebalanced, then mount something to read the sensor onto the block. (i'm assuming this is for your 6.2).
 
colbystephens said:
how are you hooking up your tach?
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I am using a vacumm pump with an ESS on it, a little wave modifier and the stock tach.

Check out my we page for some information.
 
Nice! I'm not a big fan of white gauges, but that still looks good.
 
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