My 84 bird has about the cheapest gauges available on a thirdgen. They have a large speedo, a large GAS GAUGE, and a few small WARNING LAMPS. Anyway I bought a set of digital gauges with a large speed, tach and four small gauges on the side. Are they going to plug into the gauge cluster easily, ie every is back there just not in use, or am I going to have to run a bunch of senders to the new gauges? I have a second 84 in the garage that is being used for parts and it has the same set-up as the digital ones. Will I need anything off the other one to make this work? Thanks.

 

The won't plug in unless they're application-specific, but since you gave absolutely no information about where these gauges came from, and I'm not aware of any, I'm going to guess no.

 

Sorry about that...

The digital gauges are the ones floating around ebay now for 82-85 Firebirds. They run the speedo off of a cable so that will work. It's the rest of the stuff I'm not sure of. Is the board in the back the same for the different stock gauges? If so they will work if not I have some wires to run....

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...07752&r=0&rd=1

Here's on the auction for the gauges that is still going for reference...and if anyones interested.

 

Oh. That looks just like the kit I've got for my 85 IROC. Hookup was a piece of cake. The wires for the new gauges have alligator clips on them and you just clip them to the metal sockets that the stock gauges sit in. The only thing I didn't like was how the new VSS for the speedo was incorporated into a 1' section of speedo cable. The instructions state that's only a temporary setup until you can have a VSS permanently installed into the stock cable, which I don't like. That's why I haven't installed it yet. I'm undecided whether I want to take my chances with the adapter or if I'm going to chop up a spare speedo cable.

 

Aligator Clips? Thats strange.... So I can basically clip onto any one of the terminals? I just found out that because of the 'idiot lights' my harness for the gauges is different then those with small gauges. I know Im going to have to change sensors. If I can just clip on anywhere t will save alot of headaches. Thanks for the info.

 

all bets are off if you have an idiot gauge cluster. The aligator clips don't clip directly to the harness. If you take your actual gauge cluster apart and pull out the individual gauges, you'll see that they have tabs that press into a female terminal on the white portion of the cluster. The aligator clips are designed to attach to those female terminals.

 

Thanks Jim85IROC

OK so it looks like my first method of attack should be changing out my idiot light cluster for a spare gauge cluster. has anyone done this? I see that the wiring at the two connectors behind the cluster is different. Are all of the wires the same back there just in different spots? I am goign to of course need to run a wire for the tach and change some sender but other than that??? Is this possible?

I saw the tech article on swapping out the camaro gauges and did a search but none of it is much help. The two cluster I have, both of which are from the same year/engine/tranny setup, have different wiring. It's really a love/hate relationship I have with the General.

I am assuming here but if I change out the idiot cluster for the gauge cluster everythign should work just fine. Ok now I'm rambling. any help would be great.