Howdy guys

Next week i'm gonna start striping down my 1988 F150 parts truck, it's a 300-6 5 speed and my driver is a 1989 F150 300-6 C6.

The 5 speed truck has a factory tach and my '89 has the basic dash.

It is hard to swap over the tach cluster to my '89?


I also wanna keep the original mileage to the 89 truck, in the 89.

It is easy swaping over the odometer. also? The tach cluster has a trip odometer.


Is the connector already in the '89 ready to hook up to a tach cluster?

 

Your truck is pre-wired for a tach, so it should work as long as nobody has messed with the wiring.

Non-tach cluster are three piece clusters (volt&temp, speed indicator, oil & fuel) and tach cluster are four piece clusters (volts & temp, oil & fuel, speed indicator, tach). The speed indicators might be interchangeable (as far as size), but the rest are not. If the speed indicators are the same size, then it just a matter of popping them out and swapping them.

You will be better off just using the tach cluster as a whole and running the odometer on it to what ever mileage you want it to read with a drill.

When you take it out of you parts truck, take out the speedo cable also. With both the cluster and cable out of the parts truck, hook the speedo cable back up to the cluster and a drill to the end of the cable that goes into the tranny. Then you can set it to the mileage thats on your other cluster that you are taking out of your other truck.

Hope this helps!

 

The problem is that my parts truck has 157,000km (98,000 miles) writen on it, and my 89 only has 104,000km writen. (65,000 miles).

I know it can be backed up, but then it messes up the numbers, they get loose and don't line up anymore.

 

Not if you use the drill method that I posted in my last reply. It turns the numbers just like you are driving it down the road.

When you take the tach cluster out of you parts truck, take out the speedo cable also. With both the cluster and cable out of the parts truck, hook the speedo cable back up to the cluster and a drill to the other end of the speedo cable that would go into the tranny. Run the drill forward to increase the mileage numbers or run the drill backwards to decrease the mileage numbers, you can set the mileage to match the mileage thats on your other cluster that you are taking out of your truck.

This is the same way I set the mileage on the tach cluster that I put in my truck. Its easy to do this way and it does not require you to take anything apart on the cluster that would mess up the numbers or make them loose.

 

They can be backed up by reversing the cable?

But wouldn't it just act like the truck is backing up? Far as I know, the odo. doesn't roll backwards when backing up? The speedo goes down in the negatives but never noticed the odo backing up?

 

If you're worried about or having trouble running it backward, just deploy more patience and run it forward until it turns over and gets up to the number you want. It Will take a while, but as long as you aren't overheating the drill or over-revving the odo, it should be fine.

 

Nah that's ok, I took it apart and rolled it back. Super easy actually once I took it apart.