hey guys, i did a serch and found out that the clusters are a direct swap, but i got kinda confused cause some peopel were sayign that the 85 MPH is mechanical and the 145 is electric and other peoepl were sayign they are the same. i wanna knwo whihc is correct. if it is a direct swap i'll get it dont next weekend most likely. but if it requires wireing ill have to give it to my buddy to do.

P.S. i have an 87 Firebird.

 

Don't know when they switched to electric but through 89 all were cable that I've seen.

 

Camaro speedos switched from mechanical to electric in 91 i think. Firebirds switched in '86. I know that for sure cause my '85 is cable driven, and my 86 is electric.

 

Firebird speedometers:

Cable drive 82-85

electronic drive 86-92


Camaro speedometers:

Cable drive 82-89

electronic drive 90-92



These are the facts, hope this clears up the question!

 

What about the differences between "guage" cars and "idiot light" cars??? I believe that made a difference in which type speedo you got as well.

 

By "idiot light" do you mean digital dashes? Not sure what you mean. I'm pretty sure the digital dash cars use electronic speedos.

 

The speedometer units themselves were the same, however I am not 100% sure wether the senders were different for the idiot lights vs. guages. (open/short vs. a variable feed)

 

My friend has an 84' bird with the "idiot lights" we tried to swap in a full gauge cluster both with mechanical speedos and no luck..
but thats going from lights to gauges.

 

Right, the wiring is the same, but you may have to change the senders.

 

I looked at the pin configuration, some of the pins arent used for both clusters.... there are more pins in the new cluster then there are in the old cluster... none of the gauges worked.

 

with idiot lights, rather than having a gauge that tells you what the water temperature is, there's just a light that goes on when you reach the danger point. i believe they had those for water temp, oil pressure, not sure if fuel level and voltage were idiot lights or not, i've never actually seen a car with them.

 

Hmm, that's odd. Perhaps it's a firebird thing? The camaro's just used a open/short switch vs. a variable sender for the gauge vs. lamp.

 

yeha i have all the guages. temp, volts, oil pressure, etc. but still only the 85 mph speedo. can't figure that one out. thanx for all the info guys.

 

I have an 87 trans am with an 85 mph speedo. From what i've read in 86 pontiac started useing electronic speedo's instead of cable driven. I'm just double checking but does anyone know if pontiac had an electronic 85mph speedo in 1987?

 

My 86 Irocz has 145mph speedo. also has temp ,volts ,oil press,rpm . It also has some blue cirlce light that i have no clue what its for. and it stays blue any ideas?

 

Cars with the "idiot lights" still had mechanical speedometers

 

My 87 formula had the 85mph electronic speedo. When I put the indiglo overlays in they only made them for the 120mph speedo. So I swapped in a 120mph unit. Direct swap.

 

high beams??

 

My 86 firebird has a mechanical speedo with dummy lights. In order for me to use a Gauge cluster, I would have to get one from a 86-92 and get rid of the cable and use the VSS, and somehow wire it to the ECM. The clusters from 82-85 with gauges are cable driven, however,m different wiring from my 86. Once installed the fuse would blow and nothing would work. So I just gave up and stuck with my dummy cluster. If you look on the connector of a 82-85 cluster, theres one fat gold pin. From 86-92. theres no fat pin. My 86 connector on the firewall has no fat connector. Therefore, i am stuck with my dummy cluster unless I swap out the speedo cable with a electronic system(VSS). Thats my nightmare...hhahah

 

yeah i hooked up the bulbs backwards so my high beams stayed on thanks!