I wanted to upgrade the 85mph mechanical speedo in my 83 Firebird, but GM never made a 140mph mechanical speedo for thirdgen Firebirds (they had switched to electronic speedos by the time they made 140's). I could've used an electronic speedo and the box to convert it but I wanted to keep it simple.

GM kept the Camaro speedo mechanical until 1990. They had 145mph mechanical speedos available from 86-89. I thought I'd see if I could fit one in my Firebird cluster. It's an easy mod and you just have to cut one plastic post down to about half its size and the Camaro speedo drops right in.

Here's a pic of the stock 85mph speedo and 6K tach compared to the IROC 145mph speedo and T/A 8K tach.

 

The problem is that the gauge faces don't match each other perfectly. You also get the blue "brights on" light at the top of the speedo.

I hooked up with Scott from www.customgaugefaces.com and he custom made white faced overlays so everything matched. He even added a couple hash marks and made the 145mph speedo into a 150mph speedo. He put my yellow-lines and redlines on the tach where I wanted them, and he changed the tach reading from RPMx100 to RPMx1000 (so the numbers around the outside are just 1 2 3 4... instead of 10 20 30 40... I always thought that looked stupid).

 

The lettering style he uses closely matches the AutoMeter Phantom gauges- so when I put gauges in my pillar, they'll match the ones in the cluster.

BTW, thanks to ES87iroc -- He posted a pic of a T/A with an Iroc speedo in it many months ago and I just copied the idea and upgraded it by getting custom faces made.

 

Awesome work! Very nice cluster for a very nice car. I love it.

 

Kevin, you just gave me the "I need that!" bug.

Thanks a lot.

 

That's pretty sweet looking. I've thought about doing the white gauge face look, but haven't been able to find any that has the '82-'84 look. I never really thought about a speedometer swap becasue I too didn't want to convert to electric but now that I know the camaros were mechanical I might think about doing it. I wanted to go the cheap route and try to make my own gauges but couldn't really figure out how to do it since the 82-84's are different. The numbers are actually printed onto the gauge, not like an overlay for later years. I got a spare cluster to try and figure something out but kinda just let it go. My question is how do you fasten the white face gauges on the stock cluster? The only one that has screws is the speedometer...and since you changed it for a Camaro speedometer I don't know about that one. The other gauges...tach, volts, oil, fuel and temp don't have any screws, only rivets where the actual gauge is fastened onto the back. Did you just use double sided tape or something?

 

Back in the early 1980's there were a few companies that made160MPH speedometers for 82-84 Firebirds.

I just read in a recent Pontiac magazine that a company has started to make 160MPH for 82-84 Firebirds again. Their website is www.autoinstruments.com It looks just like the versions that Mecham and T/A Specialities made back in the day.

 

The T/A Specialties is a 155mph mech gauge.
This came out of my friends 82 Trans Am,

 

I'll have to check out that company. I like the black face gauge better because I'm trying to go for a stock looking apearance.

 

Actually, I sent my cluster to Scott and he took the needles off, made the custom faces, painted the needles and put it all back together. I received it just like you see it.

My cluster was his prototype, so I dunno if that is his standard procedure or if he just sends you the faces now that he's made up a template. If someone is interested in a set of these, contact Scott and post in this thread how he goes about it.