hey all!
i've been kicking around the idea of replacing my instrument cluster so that i can get a tach in my truck. It's a 1990 f150 300 L6 with the Mazda 5spd and 3.55 rear. What exactly is involved in doing this? Are there any particulars, or will any dash setup from 87-92 body style work. Will I need any parts other than the panel?

 

>hey all!
> i've been kicking around
>the idea of replacing my
>instrument cluster so that i
>can get a tach in
>my truck. It's a 1990
>f150 300 L6 with the
>Mazda 5spd and 3.55 rear.
>What exactly is involved in
>doing this?

Really it's pretty simple. All you have to do is unbolt the dash and unhook it. I yanked the one out of my 1989, thinking it would be easy to find a tach cluster. I never found one, in the *single* day that I looked.

Are there any
>particulars, or will any dash
>setup from 87-92 body style
>work. Will I need any
>parts other than the panel?
>
You would have to go with a 1987-1991 only. These are still mechanically operated and not electronic. They shouldn't be too hard to find. Probably easier to find on the internet. Unless you find one with close to the same exact mileage, you probably should swap your odometer out with the new one. If you roll it backwards, it will break.



Good luck!

BTW, Hotrodford_88 and a few other's have swapped out there's so they may be able to give you some more information than what I have given you.

 

I just did this exact swap last Sat night. I have a '91 F-250 Custom with a 300 and there are absolutely no options at all on this truck. I wanted a tach and trip odo so I went to a yard and there were a few trucks with the gauge clusters available. I pulled one out of an XLT truck that had the mileage reading 1K miles less than my current one. As far as the swap goes, it's a plug-n-play deal. The truck I pulled my cluster out of had a manual transmission and mine is a C6 so I had to swap the shift indicators out, no biggie. I was able to do the swap in a 1/2 hour and I've never done it before. I learned how it went by taking the one out of the junkyard truck since most of the dash was already stripped. The hardest part is getting the speedo cable disconnected. I found out that you can pull on the speedo cable pretty hard from below the dash so you can have some room to work with behind the cluster to get it disconnected.

Dustin Siebert
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