Loving the truck so far after putting 8k miles on in the first few months.

The black plastic trim on the dash around the instrument cluster floats around... It's not attached correctly or could be DOA already. Ideally, I want to remove it as correctly as possible to replace a burned out light bulb behind the speedo.
*It would be nice to know if I'm doing 55 or 75 at night

When it's all said and done I will need to get behind the instrument cluster for the bulb from what I can tell. The more guidance , the better. Once the plastic tabs are broken off, it will shimmy and squeak forever.

Thank you in advance.

 

You will have to carefully pry out the 2 one inch wide strips towards the bottom of the outer cover. Under the strips will be 2 screws, one on each side of the steering column. Once they are removed, and the **** removed from the light switch, the cover can be pulled out so you can unplug the tank selector switch, and the harness or the WTS light. With the cover removed you can get to the screws (8?) that hold the instrument cluster in.

 

Take headlight **** off first. Then remove 2 trim pieces, red arrows. Then there should be 2 screws under trim. Then pull from bottom of bezel to release it. There should be 3 clips at yellow arrows. Gently pull at each one from the dash. Don't pull bezel too far or else you will break standoffs for fuel tank switch and WTS cluster. Unhook wires from those.




Pink arrow shows where my bezel was broke at screw and screw stayed in dash. Yellow arrows show where mine was broke and clips stayed in dash.




Blue arrow shows broken place where screw went.




Yellow arrows pointing to broken standoff places.




Don't have pics, but to remove cluster on vehicle with automatic trans you have to take PRND21 cable from under steering column out first. Then I think it is only 4 screws holding cluster in. There is several other screws holding clear face to cluster. One other point I would like to make is that the 2 big plugs in the back of the cluster have tabs that you have to squeeze both sides in to remove plug instead of normal pry them out.to remove.


My bezel was flopping around too. I ended up putting one from a gas F-150 in. I did have to take a dremel and open up the area for the WTS cluster.

Edit: The one I found from the F-150 had the yellow arrow places broken too, but someone put the clips back in the standoffs with small screws. Seems to work fine.

Kevin

 

For as tough as Ford built these trucks the dash bezels are ridiculously fragile. Kevin's write-up is perfect. The only thing I'll add is that I've had good luck using a Upholstery removal tool to pop the top 3 clips. They break very easily.

Good Luck,
Bob

 

This is excellent information. The photos help immensely. I need to do this and now have a much better idea of what is involved. I think I might go to the junkyard first, for practice.

Reps will be sent shortly unless the system won't allow me.

Edit:
Reps sent. Forgot to subscribe.

 

This was such a benefit for me, Guys!

Of course, all of the breaking was done before I got there. Ended up re-attaching with black interior trim screws to eliminate the incessant rattles and squeaking.

Are there any after-market dash panels out there or am I doomed to sport the Frankenstein look?

 

There are quite a few on Ebay from 70-100 bucks. They are almost always in good shape, but you can really look at the description and the usually say if tabs are broken or not.