Hey yall quick post. My truck is an 1983 f100 and it didn’t come with a factory tachometer. There’s a tachometer on marketplace and I was wondering if there was anyway I could install it to my instrument cluster. Any videos or threads up about that? I just want to make sure I can do “swap” before getting it

 

Does your truck have gauges or idiot lights? IIRC, the instrument clusters are physically different. The idiot light version does not have provisions to install the tach.

 

Yes I have the dash bulbs and I do have gauges

 

You have gauges, not idiot lights. All instrument clusters have dash bulbs for illumination. Some have gauges to relay engine information, some just have (idiot) lights for warnings.

 

Ahhh my mistake apologies. So a factory tach would work? And is it difficult to install?

 

Because you have gauges, temp / oil / charge, you can add a tach to your cluster.
Besides the tach gauge you will need the printed board that supports a tach as yours will not.

Pull your gauge cluster, undo all the bulbs (good time to replace them with LED's and do away with the colored covers) and the nuts holding the gauges to the board.
Be vary careful on the nuts as you DO NOT want the studs to twist when undoing them or you ruin the gauge. Remove the printed board.

Now I cant remember if the holes are there for the tach or not but if not lay the tach printed board on the cluster and mark for the holes.
Drill holes, printed board, nuts for gauges, bulbs and pop the cluster back in.
They say you may need to do some thing out at the ICM with a jumper wire but dont know what that is as I did not need to to do anything with the wiring or drilling for the tack.
Mine worked as soon as the truck was running.

Oh there is also something about iv the motor is a six or v8 but dont remember what that is ATM
Dont remember if I had to make that change or not sorry.
Dave ----

 

If the purchase doesn't include the special circuit board for the tach, you can still get around this. All of the necessary vehicle wiring is already there in the big connector that plugs into the back of the instrument cluster. You can splice into those wires and run the 4 extra wires needed from there to the tach. Use ring terminals where the tach is physically attached. That's how I did my '84, adding a tach without the special circuit board.

If not comfortable splicing into the wiring, I think somebody (LMC?) sells the circuit board specific to the tach.

Somewhere we had a good thread on the whole subject. If I get a little free time later, I'll see if I can find it.

 

Found it! Take a look here for more details:

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...tock-tach.html

 

I want to say on my old cluster the holes were in the plastic housing for the tach, as the filler plate to cover the opening used two of them I think to hold the plate in place. But the circuit board wont be for a tach model. I dont know if it would be viable for him but I bought a whole cluster assembly for under $100 that came also with a speedo that had a trip odometer as well. I just swapped the whole thing out and put mine up in a box for safe keeping. I dont know how easy it is to locate the right printed circuit boards are today.

 

If you can get the whole complete cluster with the tach in it, just swap it out and plug the other one in. See if they have a whole complete cluster with the tach.

 

Yea I dont remember needing to drill any holes either but thought I would say just in case.

I also think LMC sells the 3 different printed boards, no gauges / gauges no tach / gauges & tach or did when I looked years ago.
Dave ----

 

I remember that as well, but it seems since 2020 lots of offerings are no longer valid. Used to have a dash pad that came in colors other than black and white in 2017-2019 after 2020 it went back to just black and white pads. I also noticed a lot of parts are no longer available for my Fairlane either that used to be offered.

 

I wonder if they just dont list the parts on line or on paper to save money?
We see that a lot with AMC parts, not listed, but if you call they can get them.
How many people look for AMC or Fairlane parts over the newer year stuff?
Dave ----

 

Thats a big reason why I kept all my old catalogs that way I can at least give a description they used or a old part number when the time comes. One of the ones that really got me was in 2019 they just brought out dash pads in colors other than white and black. after 2020 they went back to just black and white dash pads, the company I found actually had a shadow blue dash pad new that would have matched perfectly my shadow blue sun visors I got new as well. But now I have to get a black dash pad so when I paint it with SEM it will match the new door panels which only come in black from Dennis-Carpenter.

Same with my Fairlane parts, offering is getting light, yet another upholstry company went out of business and now only one left is SMS and they only have a few of the upholstry items that are just like the originals, the other company I was going to get the other parts from as they had the correct offerings. Just like carpeted floor mats with the embroidery logos, I had planned on getting one with the Ford crest for my Fairlane and get the "Belair" script one for my Belair, problem is I found a few offerings but I dont think they are the same company and the Belair script one I found is not even the correct script, its the tri-five script which uses the large lower case a that is as big as the B, but by time my '63 was built it was just "Belair" without the large lowercase a.

Its just like I dont even look at Dennis-Carpenter much anymore cause he used to have a bunch of stuff for Fairlanes, trucks, and tractors but I found out that Larrys Tbird has a bigger selection that is more OE correct, NPD has a larger selection of parts for our trucks some are Dennis-Carpenter branded but most is not, and then for tractors I go to Steiner and All-State for parts they are the only ones that basically carrys everything for my '58 Ford Workmaster 641 and my '68 Ford 3000 tractors. I dont know what it is but its like everything automotive is dying out, Holley stock took a nose dive in 2022 and its been stuck around the $2.00 - $3.00 mark since then down from its almost $15.00 mark in 2022 before the nose dive. Then I asked on social media on a Dakota Digital post about a new release asking them when they are going to release the RTX clusters for the 80-86 Ford trucks, reply I got was to keep an eye out for fall that they had some interesting new releases that will surprise me and yet I havent seen anything new from them and I bet if I look right now still wont be a RTX cluster for our trucks.

 

I was just going to ask this question. I have a cluster with trip on the way to put in my 82 F250. One thing I'm going to do before I put it in is pull the Ammeter and have it converted to Volt gauge here https://www.rccinnovations.com/index...=menu-volt-all they need the meter to convert. They used to do core exchanges but I guess they've been getting non matching cores so they only do conversions now.