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About a month ago I spied a 1967 F100 long bed junker in a fenced but open wrecker/tow lot. I called the number on the fence and asked permission to go in and look at the truck....he said he would sell parts. First good thing I saw was a nice looking F600 instrument cluster installed and I assume functional (when it was running). I called the guy up and told him the only thing I could was the cluster and offered him $50. He agreed. Since then, the gate has been locked every time I checked. Finally, today, I called and he say they were headed to the lot right then so I met him there. He told me to have at it so I removed the 9 or so screws, unscrewed the speedometer, pulled off the vacuum gauge line and unplugged the electricals. And finally, there it is! I handed him a fifty and said thanks...both parties happy!
Nice save! Most of those are pretty rusty by the time they get rescued. I cleaned mine up by gently rubbing the rusty spots with bronze wool dipped in light oil. Wiped it down and hit it with Mother's polish and it shined right up. Yours is in much better shape, so you should be able to make it shine with little effort.
I have removed the rust from all three of the F600 units that I have in my trucks. One of which had what looked like heavy rust and was going to need cleaning and paint.
I got out my bottle of Naval Jelly and a paint brush. An hour later and the chrome looked great! All of the rust spots were where the rust had eaten through the chrome in tiny holes and spread out on top of the surrounding chrome. Similar to a volcano.
Some masking tape and semi-gloss black made the panel look nearly new.
I also had chrome ceiling trim that looked really rusty and salvageable. I got it from a guy really cheap thinking that I'd steel wool it and paint it.
I brushed on some naval jelly and the rust smeared. ?!?!?!?
It turned out that the "rust" was cigarette smoke and a good scrubbing with glass cleaner was all it needed.
Barring physical damage... all of the gauges will work. You'll need the connector and as much of the wiring harness as you can get. Either from the donor truck or from many of the 60's cars.
The connector in my 428CJ F250 is from my 67 Cougar. I made the truck panel wiring harness about 8" longer to facilitate future work.
The wiring is the same on the F600 harness as on your truck but the shades may be different.
I nipped off the old F250 connector and about 3" of wire for the guy who buys it from me. Then I just spliced the wires from the harness to the corresponding wires on the connector.
At most you may have to replace the voltage regulator but I doubt it. All three of my panels worked just fine. And I have the VR from the Cougar in case of a failure.
Originally Posted by gohunt
It appears this was USED in the truck I got it out of “as is”. What gages will work and which won’t, or what has to be rewired?
