Ive been wanting to swap the guages on my '95 F150 to ones that fit a tach. Ive been looking at some on ebay and it seem the prices on them more than i can afford right now. Today, one with 178,000miles(not that the miles matter) and a tach sold for $100. I was wondering if anyone knew a cheaper source for these clusters with the tachs beside local salvage yards (no luck there). Does Ford sell these still (the four small guages and tach)? Any help in pointing me in the right direction would be appriciated.
Thanks,
Jordan

 

$70-$100 is normal.

 

I paid $75 for one with a tach about 3 years ago at a local wrecking yard.

 

I'm pretty sure I paid someone on here $90.

 

Bought mine w/tach at pick-a-part in Pomona CA for $30.

 

At the local junkyard near me (the only u-pull-it local), I pay $20 for any analog cluster, and $30 for any digital cluster. Doesn't matter what its from, and I always take as much of the harness with it that I can. I use pruning sheers

 

frederic, did you make your digi-cluster plug and play for the F-Series? Does everything read correctly (ie: gas, oil...etc)? Sorry, I'm just *obsessed* with that cluster!! You should maybe, uh, I dont know...sell it? LOL .

 

Which cluster, the thunderbird digital cluster? If you mean that one... it's sorta plug and play at this point, I'm on revision two however.

The first version I shared pictures here (I think) where I dismantled the t-bird cluster, took out the guts, then bandsawed off the pieces that weren't necessary and in the way, then gluing standoffs into the shell of a spare factory cluster, and soldering wires through a hole I drilled to the back of the cluster, on that flexible film circuit board. Was a little tough to solder but using a 15W soldering iron it came out okay with minimal melting damage. This actually fit into the Ford opening more or less, but was tight to get in and out considering the hacked up merging of clusters was slightly thicker. But to do this, you need a t-bird digital cluster, and a factory F-series cluster that you're willing to zip through a bandsaw, dremel the snot out of inside, etc. Then I made all sorts of crazy aluminum bracketry to fit the two together. When it was done, it was rather ugly, but it did fit behind the F-series black surround and unless you looked closely you couldn't tell it didn't belong there. AND it used the factory cluster connecters from the F350 when I was done. Here are the pictures if you missed some or all of them:

Fred's Cluster Hack-Job.

And for those who don't want to see the step by step, waiting for pictures to load, here was the final result:


I soldered into the factory harness a many, many pin molex connector, then to the "snip" of thunderbird cluster harness I took with the t-bird cluster, I attached a mating molex connector to those wires. When I run the t-bird cluster, I just connect the t-bird "snip" with the molex connector to the molex I've added to the harness, and tuck the factory truck cluster connectors out of the way. To put the factory cluster back in, I simply tuck the molex connector out of the way and use the factory truck connectors on the factory cluster as it came from Ford.

When I first wired it, oil, temp, and fuel weren't even remotely correct. The F-series of my vintage only have an oil pressure switch, not a variable sender, so the cluster made the assumption that the oil pressure switch was really a short circuit and displayed such. Easy fix - I replaced the oil pressure sender at the back of the engine right behind the intake with a thunderbird sender of the same year the cluster is. Now, I have oil pressure readings that vary a little bit with RPM, indicating its working properly. With the truck cluster put back in there, it doesn't seem to care that the sender has been changed. If there is pressure, the needle sits at "O" instead of below "N" as it did with old sender. So, that's that.

The F-series also has two water temp senders - one for the EEC computer and one for the cluster. So, changing that to a t-bird sender makes sense, and the digital cluster displays correctly. With the truck cluster in, with the t-bird water temp sender, it swings a bit more than it did originally, but not enough to be annoying. I have a marginal thermostat anyway... The connector on the water temp sender is keyed differently than the t-bird sender, so when you leech a t-bird sender take a snip of the wiring to it and splice it in. I have both connectors in parallel as well, so if I put the F-series sender back in, I use the other connector.

Fuel gauge was a pain in the ***... as you know my crewcab has two tanks... the front tank has a t-bird sender, and the rear tank as the F-series sender. So when switched to the front tank, the t-bird cluster displays correctly, tested down to about 1/2 gallon of fuel left. Fill it up, its correct. The back tank displays correctly with the F-series cluster.

Switch the "wrong" tank to the "wrong" cluster, and you get interesting, inaccurate results. BTW, I didn't replace the entire sender, all I did was buy a new t-bird sender, then graft the actual sensor to the F-series sending unit by drilling out the rivets, and mounting it with new rivets. This way the length of the float is appropriate for the depth of the tank. I have to do the back tank this way... so both tanks read appropriate on the t-bird cluster. Unfortunately, the front tank's pump died so I have to drop both tanks yet again. But I have to wait for them to be empty. When I swapped the t-bird fuel sender I ended up soaking myself in gasoline, which was most unpleasant. Glad I wore goggles.

The tach didn't want to work correctly either... but I figured out why that is. The t-bird taps the tach signal further down the wiring so its not reading it directly off the TFI module, this was an easy fix, I just attached a wire from my molex connector on the truck side to the wire on the EEC connector, and was good to go. The truck cluster I have as a spare (with a tach, unlike my factory cluster) didn't seem to mind this and displayed the RPMs correctly.

Revision Two is completely different. Instead of hacking up the two clusters and merging them together, I'm simply using an unmolested T-bird cluster and building a new dashboard around that. Here is what I've done thus far... slow progress but at least there is SOME progress:

 

....Sweet....

 

Looks like a group of Mexicans just stole that truck and gutted the insides! Nothing against Mexicans, they're hard workers lol.

 

Heh-heh, yeah, well, to make room for new bits, you have to remove the old bits The sad thing is I drove around all winter without the heater ductwork structure, and the cluster was electrical taped to the column so it wouldn't fall off and damage the wiring

 

Thanks for all the replies guys. Im going to keep my eyes open on ebay the local salvage yard for a cluster with a tach. If i get really ambitious I might try to do something like Frederick's digital cluster.(which by the way looks really awesome)
jordan

 

frederic, does the cluster have other neat features? I know on a Lincoln Towncar (a '95) the digital cluster displays your MPG as well as other 'goodies'.

 

If you look at the later pictures where I've integrated it into the factory dash, you'll see three "areas" of the t-bird cluster.

Left is fuel, oil pressure, and water temp. Center is speed, odo and tach. Right is "data". MPG, trip odo, and a variety of other neat stuff.

None of this works with the 93 F-series EEC that I have... it's a matter of hooking up the Data+ and Data- (pin 9 and pin 28 on the EEC) lines to the cluster, so I thought. Didn't work. I tried a 94 E350 EEC, and I got some data, but it made little to no sense. 70MPH on the highway, the cluster told me I was getting 61 miles to the gallon. I sooooo wish! Anyway, it turns out I had the Data+ and data- lines backwards, so once I fixed that the 94 EEC gave me appropriate data. The 93 EEC, still, did not.

I think 94, for trucks, is when Ford added that data line feature? Because I know the snap on scan tools that display EEC data give less info in 93, but more data in 94. I was able to verify that with a borrowed snap-on tool.

I'm in the process of making a new engine-bay wiring harness anyway.... to support Mass Air. I really didn't want to, but in order to have access to the parameters of the EEC its much easier to hack up something that has already been dissected and information posted all over the internet. Why start from scratch!

But I verified already that the mustang computer I'm using (93 A9P) will talk to the cluster and they speak the same "language" as for as passed data values, so the cluster will work in its entirety very soon.

 

Incase anyone knows off the top of their head; will the cluster (w/tach) from a 93 Bronco fit and work in a 94 F350? I have my eye on one - from the pictures, it looks right, but would like to be sure before I bid.. erm.. buy