I'll be putting new gauges in soon and taking the original instrument cluster out. I was just curious as to how anyone who has done this has done their wiring, did you run all new wire, tie into the factory wiring, etc?

I really don't want to cut the factory harness JUST in case I want to ever put an original cluster back in one day.....I did a search and saw plenty of custom gauges, but not too many pics of wiring.

If you have pics of the back of your dash I wouldn't mind seeing them.

The gauges being put in are all autometer electric units, doing tach, speedo, fuel level, oil pressure, volts, and coolant temp

 

Last time I saw this done dedicated wires for each gauge were run. Someone else might chime in with a different suggestion though

 

There is very little you can do in terms of adapting to the original wiring. There are no provisions for a voltmeter or tachometer in the original harness, so you'll have to run new wiring anyway. If your new oil pressure and coolant temperature gauges are electric and not mechanical and you'd like to use the original wiring to run out to the respective sending units, there is no way to "plug in to" the original cluster connector without cutting wiring.

My advice is to leave the original connector untouched, wrap it in plastic or tape, and tuck it back out of the way. Then run all new wiring for your new cluster. This will be the simplest and cleanest solution, and your original cluster wiring will be untouched.

 

I used MSD Duetsch connectors. Thanks to CRSweet for the recommendation. I tagged each wire coming to the original plug and cut it.

 

I like the high beam light down low on the left like that, I never thought of putting it there.

Did you use a dedicated connector for each gauge or a larger one with all the gauges tied in?

 

Wiring in aftermarket gaues arent too difficult, just make sure you plan out your wiring and it should all go well.

You can tap into the dash illumination, turn and high indicators off the factory harness. As far as everything else goes I ended up running all new wiring to make it simple for me.

All my gauges run into a single 12v feed, fed of a 10amp fuse from the fuse block. Fuel, Oil and Temp each have a seperate lead that run to the sending units. Volt Meter is automatically fed off the 12v supply, so no need for sending unit. Gauge illumination lights can be tied together into one 12v supply. Turn and High indicators each run to their designated 12v supply. All the grounds I tied together into one feed and it leads to a grounding spot on the dash.

To make it easy to take in and out use a MSD deutsch connector, or a weatherpack connector that has enough pins.
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Kind of a bad picture, but you can kind of see how theyre layed out. I can get a better close up if you want.

 

Thanks crsweet78, that is exactly what I was looking for, a nice picture of the gauge wiring. I'm one of those visual learning type people, love the pictures so I can see what I need to do.