Posting for a friend...

He took all the needles off his gauge cluster and wants to know if he can put the needles from a 91 Explorer on it. The reason for the change, he accidentally broke one when cleaning the cluster, and they were also faded bad. Will it matter where the needle is put on the gauges metal shaft? How can he make sure they go back exactly the same?

Thanks for helping my friend out.

 

I have never tried such a thing. On the rare times where I've knocked needles loose or off, I usually just toss the cluster and visit a junkyard and acquire new raw material to ruin.

Which cluster do you have, the tach cluster, or the one with the large speedo in the center and two gauges on either side?

I probably have some or all of the pieces floating around here somewhere if you're desperate. I've been tinkering with clusters from all sorts of weird things, to take the housings. The gauges go in freezer bags and put in a box.

 

frederic- i have no tach on my truck. i'm looking for a cluster w/the tack. i'm gonna keep my speedometer for the odometer reasons, but i need the piece to the left, with the 4 guages on it, and the piece to the right, that has the tach. do you have anything? if so how much do you wanna sell it for.

 

Well, I have the gauges themselves, but I can guarrentee I won't have a usable cluster housing or a usable flexi-circuit board that goes on the back because I spent a lot of hours before this point hacking up cluster housings trying to shove the digital thunderbird guts into it. No matter what I cut or what I glued, it just wouldn't fit which is why I'm cutting up aluminum plate instead of clusters. Was getting too expensive.

If a freezer bag full of cluster guts doesn't float your boat, no problem.

 

Jess,

Went through the box of cluster parts in the attic, and sure enough I have enough parts to put together a tach cluster.

This would be from the 91 and prior years however, even though the "guts" are the same the housings are very different from the 91 and earlier, and the 92 to 96.

So let me ask, which one do you need?

 

there are 3 peices. all i need is the tach and the one on the left that has the 4 guages on it. the one on the left is important because i currently have my fuel and another guage where the tach is going. like i said i dont need the middle speedometer section because i'm just going to use mine for the odometer. if what you have will work for a 95 truck i'll take it. do you have any pictures so i know it the one i'm picturing in my head?

 

Like so?

https://www.ford-trucks.com/user_gal...=36743&width=2

While the gauges in the picture will work with your truck, to do the tach on the right and the four gauges on the left, you're going to need the housing and the flexi-circuit board, which I don't have to match the 92-96 trucks. But I have the gauges... not that it helps you a helluva lot.

 

will my existing board work?

 

Sadly, not unless you have an existing tach cluster that fits your truck.

The connectors are the same, but the spring clips for the gauges to push into are in specific spots and in different places in the tach versus the non-tach cluster. I already went down that path.

I have an older housing, 91 and back, that these gauges fit right into as well, however its for a mechanical speedo and the plastic housing and circuit board are wired differently than the 92-96 trucks, and the connectors don't fit.

Ford apparently did that on purpose. Sorry man, was trying to help, but it looks like we struck out.

BTW, *any* f-series cluster, including the full size bronco, the f-150,250,350 gas or diesel, will fit your 92-96 truck and work just dandy. Just know the diesel tach only goes to 4K RPM and if you rev higher than that the needle gets pegged. Doesn't hurt it, just looks really stupid. but you can swap the tach out for a gas tach using the diesel cluster/housing/circuit board and other gauges, I verified that works. Its that interchangable.

 

I wanted to put a diesel tach in my truck because it is the 300 and never revs high anyway. I got a diesel tach and put it in, it didn't work though. The one you tried, what year model was it? Do you still have the diesel tach? About those gauges... If my friend does swap the needles and doesn't put them on in the perfect location will it read correct? I can't understand how Ford was able to put the needles on and get them to read accurate. Because I have a old cluster and pulled a needle off and the spindle will spin all the way around and then you can push it in and it has limits, thus it would read incorrecly since I spun the spindle.

 

well thanks for your help. i would actually prefer to have a diesel tach because the 300 is useless over 4k. i think it would be nice so that if somebody borrows my truck they know not to rev it high. pcman was having problems w/his gas tach in a diesel, but it wasn't stock. the stock diesel tack will fit right in? i think your now the unofficial guage cluster expert of FTE haha.


would this work?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...tem=2462942194

 

My crewcab is a 93, my friends is either a 94 or a 92, I posted it somewhere. Anyway, mine is a 5.8L gas and his is a diesel dually extended cab, and when he visited last weekend we swapped clusters. Put his diesel tach cluster into my truck, and my non-tach cluster into his truck, and we drove about 100 miles round trip and both clusters worked fine as far as we could tell.

And no, I don't have the diesel tach any longer because its in his cluster in his truck, we swapped clusters back when he headed home. We just swapped them because of this thread, and another thread where we were discussing cluster compatibility across the 92-96 years. Since both our trucks were in the same year range, it seemed like a simple, logical experiment.

The tach is essentially a stepper motor with a PIC chip on it. The PIC chip is programmed by whoever Ford outsources the tach manufacturing to, and counts pulses that come in. If it sees more pulses for "X" amount of time as compared to the last "X" amount of time, it steps the stepper motor to the right and moves the needle upwards on the scale. Less pulses coming in, it moves the needle downward on the scale. I haven't taken the stepper motor apart, but the several that I've played with (diesel or gas) always seem to spring into the zero RPM position when the power is off, even if you rotate the needle with your finger several revolutions. So when you turn on the truck, the PIC chip can just assume that the tach started at zero. The several tachs I've seen do not have posts to prevent the needle from going to far, this "zero when off" seems to be inside the stepper motor.

I guess I had assumed they all worked the same, being made by Ford (or whoever they oursourced it to).

 

frederic - thanks. i think i'm gonna stop by the junkyard to see what i can find

 

It would work in my truck

Because of this thread, I'm starting to wonder if maybe my truck is miswired, or something else along those lines. Everyone else is having tach problems but me.

Very curious indeed.

 

frederic: Do you have a diesel tach for a 87-91 Ford Truck? About the needles, any idea on what my friend could do he said he wasn't buying another d@mn cluster.

thanks