I have a 1983 f150. Everything works good.
The problem is the blank thing in the middle of the guages.
I always feel like I am missing something.
I bought guages and trim from 1980 Bronco.
If I use just the trim I get BRAKE for right and Fasten Belts for left turn signal I plugged in the 1980 guages and only high beam light works.
And all guages except tach. work. I just wanted a tach.
Is there a way to hook it up without the stock plastic circuits on back?
Is there a diagram I can understand somewhere?
Four nuts on the tach. Can I run wires somewhere and make it work
with my 1983 non tach assembly? How do I move turn signal indicators over one hole? Should I just toss this and start over? Can't afford to buy another woodgrain bezel. I wanted that too. I also got the 1980 clock I can't figure out where the four wires go.

 

I am not so sure your new cluster is any good. I did just the opposite I replaced the gages in my 1980 for truck with gages from a 1986 ford truck. I too then had the problem with my right blinker was now flashing the brake warning light. This is because for some reason ford moved the right blinker light over one slot in 1982. Your left blinker should still be right, i am pretty sure. Your tac should work just by plugging it in, unless at some point someone has changed engies from a six cyc to or an eight or vice versa. If this the case you just need to ground a wire and it will work for eight cylinder or unground a wire for six cylinder.

To fix the blinkers the only way I know is to simply tear off (VERY CAREFULLY the markers from your blinker slought and swith it with the seat belt warning marker. This may seem drastic but it works.
I don't have the books with me but there are ways to hard wire the tac. when I go home this weekend i can tell you what post on the back of the tack go to what.

 

you can allways install an after market tach i did this to my 1980 f150 custom then in that open spot duct tape a picture or something worked for me i got a small callendar there lol as for the woodgrain bezzle you can allways detatch the gague pannel that works from the old one and attatch it to the one you want

 

I am going to try to swap the turn signal plastic pieces with the belts and brake ones.

I want the diagram for hard wiring the factory tach.
also I would like to wire the factory clock.
I have black, white, blue, and green wires on the clock from a 1980.
My 1983 doesn't have those four colors anywhere together behind the dash.
I have a 300 6 cylinder. What wires are for the tach?

 

Go get a Haynes Manual. All the wiring is in it.


Don't feel bad, I did the same thing. I have three Dash Gauge sets now. My stock, a 1980 that had the brake and turn signal reversed like yours, and finally a good tach set that I put in and am running with now. My other ones are just spares in case I ever need a gauge I guess.

I don't know of a way to make a 1980 work in an 81-86. The wires are reversed on the plug and I tried to switch around but the lights also work different so even that doesn't work.

The brake light works by getting ground and the turn signal works by getting 12 Volts. The grounds are shared so if you try to swap the wires around, it screws up other stuff.

The tach is hard wired in the circuit board and I don't think you could make room to push the signal in without some major mods.

When I wrote about my 80 dash, I had 3-4 messages from people wanting it. Maybe someone will buy yours and you can just try to get another one that will work in your truck. They are on Ebay all the time for $25-70 so it just takes patience to get one of the cheap ones.

Just look close and ask questions. The reason I still have my 1980 one is that the speedometer isn't the one that should have been in there and it didn't have the trip meter. The one I have in now does.

Good Luck,

Lee

 

tell me how it work out I want to do the same. Good luck