Normally the sending unit will go bad before the actual gauge. The ALT gauge does not use a sending unit but does connect to the voltage regulator. Make sure all wires are attached and snug at the alternator and voltage regulator. You can take a measurement at the regulator to see if you are getting output. If yes, the ALT gauge is bad. This is a very inexpensive salvage yard item. Temperature gauge does have a sending unit which can be checked for output at the sending unit. Aftermarket gauges often use the same location for the aftermarket sending unit, so check your sending unit first. A new stock sending unit is 1/3 the cost of the least expensive aftermarket gauge set.

 

Good points. I Might add you can easily check the temp gauge by grounding the wire in the sending unit to see if the gauge pegs.

 

82F1507.5: I'm afraid you are incorrect, I have had the following instrument clusters in my 82 cab: 82 F100 DS-II(300) 84 F150 with TFI-IV(300 again) 86 F150(EFI 302) 86 F250(DS-II 460) and with the exception of the gas guage reading backwards since the chassis swap(chassis and harness are 86 F250) with all 4, everything else works fine.
Provided you have the correct engine harness for your cylinder count, all will plug and play and function properly.

As for idiot light trucks, they have a different connector for the cluster(less pins, smaller, different location) I'll take a look through my collection of clusters and post up abotu what I find regarding circut board colour.

 

82F100SWB
What part do you think is incorrect?

 

OK, I went out this morning and double checked and I was wrong before. One of my circuit boards was red, one was tan/copper and one was blueish green. All of them worked fine except for the 1980 that had the blinker and brake light reversed. This would be easy to spot though because as another poster said, the part number shows the year. If you don't have a 1980 truck, stay away from E0XX part number gauge clusters and vice versa.

Good Luck,

Lee

 

I suppose that the harness connector from a 1980 cluster with idiot lights would have to be swapped somehow to work with a 1980 with full gauges.

My 1980 has the blue-green printed circuitboard and idiot lights. The harness connector plugs right over the tach area, and there is no room to even put a tach if I wanted to.

Lee: I still may be interested in your 1980 tach cluster. I assume that it is the one you were speaking of with the blue-green circuitboard? PM me if it is available.

There has to be away to rig it.. At least the turn-signal layout is correct. I want a factory tach cluster dammit...

 

My cluster was reversed with the parking brake indicator and the turn signal.

I never bothered to fix it. I just drove it that way. Its not hurting anything.

Besides its funny to watch peoples expression while i'm stopped and my brake light is blinking when turning.

 

The factory tach has 4 terminals on the back side, The tach unit is inkstamped on the back side (sometimes) for each terminal. Some are more clear than others but all wire up the same.

Temrinals with tachometer face down on bench, 30 at top.


c 0 0 G

8 0 0 b

c=coil, G=ground, 8=(ground only if 8CYL) b=Battery

Hope this helps!

 

I don't see anyway it would be possible to rig it barring maybe rigging some sort of adapter harness that took your plug, put it into a female that would fit it, then manually rig the extra pins to a plug that would fit the new cluster and provide it the required signals it needed.

It would be a nightmare of wiring and figuring out what senders were sending the right stuff and which were not and swapping, running cables etc. Much easier to get an aftermarket set of gauges in my opinion.

Besides, when I went out to look at them all this morning, I realized that my 80 cluster didn't even have the trip odometer on it. I hadn't noticed it at the time because I didn't have one until the right year model with teh full tach and set up was installed. Whoever owned it before me must have swapped out the speedometer at some time unless they didnt have them on that year but I think all Tach clusters had the trip meter on them.

============================


Desperado - I did the same when I first got the 1980 cluster and while I ws waiting to get the right year one. I just like having a tach so I tried to ignore the lights being reversed. My wife used to laugh at me though because it DID bug me having my brake light flashing. She didn't understand what the big deal was. Luckily I don't use my signals much. -gg- I tried everything I could think of to get it wired to work short of jumper the circuit board itself. Finally a good one on Ebay showed up and I snatched it. With 3 clusters, at least I have tons of spare parts that I will never need. ( knock on wood)

 

With my new F-100 i'm going to need once again another tach cluster because i forgot to pull the one i had out of the F-150 i sold.

Took me 6 months to find the last one, ebay, boneyards...everywhere. I managed to stumble onto the last one by complete accident actually. I tripped over it in the boneyard.

The lights did bug me, but not bad enough. So long as it worked is all that mattered to me. I guess though it does help to have everything right if you do resell the truck.

 

I put a stock complete tach instrument cluster in my 1980 F100. The brake light and right turn signal switch were reversed, so all I had to do is take out the indicator covers in the instrument cluster bezel and reverse them, glue them back in. Works great.

You can see what it looks like in my pics in my gallery.

It was very simple to hook up. My truck is a IL6 engine so I didn't hook up the V8 ground wire. Later on I'm going to convert my truck to a V8 302. When I do that, I just ground that V8 wire.

I've had no problems whatsover for about 6 months now. I've driven my truck a good 2000 miles since then. Everything works great.

There used to be an aftermarket tach strapped to the steering column when I first bought the truck, but it looked ugly and the gauge wasn't completely accurate. So I took it out. It was when I discovered how to swap out clusters that I decided to get a stock one instead.

But for any of you who do this, you won't be sorry. I like not having any blank spaces in my cluster. It was bothering me having the tach space completely empty. It should've been filled with a tach gauge, so now it is.

Good luck everyone. Once in a while you can find a NOS tach gauge on Ebay, but they sell for like $20-$30 sometimes. It's really hard finding a gauge cluster, with the factory tach, that was before 1983 when they switched the brake/turn signal lights.

Have a great week everyone!

Dan

 

There are three on ebay right now that should work on 81-86 trucks. A couple are from Manual tranny trucks so if you have an auto, you will have to swap the shift indicator over but that is easy with just two screws holding the plate on......

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...sPageName=WDVW

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...sPageName=WDVW

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...sPageName=WDVW

 

Were the factory RPM gauges for the 1980-1986 F-series electrical? If so which would be better after market or an original one?

 

Factory was/is electrical. If your truck already has factory gauges [vs. idiot lights], then you can get an instrument cluster with a tachometer and swap out. The truck will already be wired for it.

Here is a link which will help: https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...tallation.html

 

on my 81 f100 i have the idiot lights and my electrical plug for the dash lights is dead center of the tach whole