Hello, pretty new here and may not be searching the right terms to find the answers I need. If anyone can help with this I'd greatly appreciate it, thanks!

I have a 71 f100 with a 351w swap that's wired to aftermarket gauges for the fuel, oil pressure, water temp, and voltage, has a tach with shift setting ability, and has an MSD ignition. I'm wondering if I can ditch the aftermarket gauges and wire everything back to the factory dash without being too invasive. I bought the truck with the swap and gauges and am very new to wiring so I'm not sure what to look for or what to expect.

If there's a better resource or already existing thread that you can point me to that'd be great too, thank you!

 

The stock gauges can probably rewired to work again but aftermarket gauges (good ones at least) are far more accurate than the factory indicators. The OEM gauges, given your familiarity, will only indicate what is "normal" whereas aftermarket gauges will actually provide numerical indicators.

Meaning, how hot is "hot" with the OEM Kentucky windage gauges versus "oh, the water temp is 195° all day in stop 'n go traffic on a 70° afternoon".

It's a bit premature at this point to say how much work it will require. Ya gotta pull the instrument cluster and evaluate how much invasiveness has already occurred and whether the stock wiring is still intact.

 

Also the sending units for the aftermarket gauges are not likely the same as what the stock gauges will need.

 

Yeah that's a good point. It's been suggested by a few people to go back to factory because the gauges are almost the only non stock thing in the cab. What about the tach? I have an AOD, is the tach necessary? The one installed is huge and not very aesthetically pleasing.

Thank you for your response!

 

This is something I was looking for. Thanks!

 

Buy stock sending units(for a 71) and put the old dash back in. Oil pressure is not big thing, water temp isn't either. Depending on which cluster you get is if you have idiot lights or actual gauges.

The tach is not necessary for any function of the vehicle. If you don't want one, leave it off.

 

Yeah mine has idiot lights for water and oil.

I'm not sure why they put the tach on. The truck looks a lot like Sloppy on the /DRIVE YouTube channel and I think whoever was building it was moving in that direction of appearance. Thanks for your advice!