Hey guys,

I need help! I wanna replace the cluster on my 78 w/ mech guages. Any advice? I mean is it as easy as it seams? Can I just unplugg the cluster and remove it without any nasty side effects? It has aftermarket engine anyways so I doubt it will effect anything there. What about the fuse box? Should I disable the circuts not being used? Please shine alittle light on this for me would ya? Also, what kinda gear do I need for the speedo cause I got a 4'11 gear and a 350turbo trans. Any suggestions on a nice speedo/tach pair cause I want them to match the black faced sending unit gauges I already have.


Thanks,
Justin

 

Well, you'll need to pull the speedometer housing in the tail of the tranny to get to the current gear in there to update your speedometer's speed. You can go on ebay and there's a seller on there that I got mine from and you can contact them and they'll figure up everything from tire size, gear ratio and tranny to get you the correct gear you need to put in the tranny tail.

As for the gauges. The stock gauges are not modular in the sense that you can disconnect "one" really. They're in a housing that has a plug in adapter that goes to a printed circuit board that holds onto the back of the gauge housing/cluster by pegs. It's kind of an "all or nothing" type deal if you ask me. You can cut up the housing and put in your new gauges but that's up to you. You can get an instrument bezel from Covan Classics in different colors and patterns if you want and they run over 100 bucks. Then you either need to rig up an adapter, buy an adapter (usually expensive) to hook up your new gauges to the already existing wiring or cut the wiring and use high quality connectors. Unless you like going down the road and your instrumentation going out due to a short or wire coming loose.

If I remember there's going to be around 20 wires (10 on each side of the connecting block) that go into the back of the instrumentation panel. You'll need a wiring diagram that tells you which wire is for what so that way you can connect them to their respective gauges.

Just because it's a new engine doesn't mean that they had to redo the electrical. Unless it's a more modernized engine with computer controllers and sensors for fuel injection and all that then the wiring should have been straight forward and nothing really changing going to the instrumentation panel.

I went to mechanical gauges but only two of them are different than the originals. The only ones that went to mechanical are the oil and temp. The speedo is still mechanical but your fuel and volt/amps will still be wired.

Hope this helps.