Hi. I am interested in putting a dashboard complete witht the gauges from either an '87 or '88 TA/formula/or firebird,in my '83 TA. Will this work? Will the gauges work properly? What parts will i need exactly for this to work successfully. Please let me know. If you or anybody you know has done this, then please let me know. I have seen it done with a fourth gen. complete dash in a third gen. car, but that was prob. a little expensive. Thanks.

James

1983 TA

 

physically it would work but you would hav eo get a guage cluster from a TA with the same engine and redline. the senders will all work unless it has a digital dash

 

I swapped an 86 cluster only, not the whole dash, into my 82. I had to re-pin the connectors in the dash. Took some adjusting to the stock harness to get enough slack on one of the wires that moved from one cornet to the other. To get the pins out i made a little tool out of a small flathead screwdriver, just ground it flatter and thinner. After struggling with some inaccurate wiring pinouts, i just reverse engineered the pinouts of the two clusters by looking at the traces on the back of the clusters. I may still have the pinouts around here, I'm pretty sure the 82-83 will be the same, and the 86-87-88 will be the same. Let me know if you need them.

Good luck.

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82 T/A 305/TH350; soon to be 350/T-5

 

Yeah. That would be great if you could give me the pinouts. Actually, all i want to swap is the clusters. I just thought everything would be needed to be changed. Please help me out...thanks.

 

I'll see what i can do about the pinouts; have to find the pad of paper i used to do it. I'll check tonight, and if i can find em (i think i know where they are) i'll put em up on a web site.


BTW, we finally had a day of warm and rain here to wash all the salt off the roads, so i got to take my T/A out for the first time after the engine/tranny/rear/interior swap.
Oh god is it nice to drive it agian!
Had to share that.



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82 T/A 305/TH350; soon to be 350/T-5

 

Ok, I found the paper with the pinouts on it. This is what worked for me.

My two clusters had different pin numbering schemes so here is the one I used.

looking at the back of the guages:


8 9 10 11 12 13 14

7 6 5 4 3 2 1


looking at the connectors in the dash:

14 13 12 11 10 9 8

1 2 3 4 5 6 7


I used the same numbering scheme for both of the connectors, even though on one of the clusters they were reversed.


And now for the pinouts:

on the cluster from the 86:
Bottom Connector
1- Tach
2- Ground
3- Illumination? maybe NC... unclear
4- Choke light
5- Temperature
6- No Connection(NC)
7- NC
8- Oil Pressure
9- Igniton (power)
10-NC
11-NC
12-Ground
13-Seatbelt light
14-VSS signal input

Top Connector
1- High beams
2- Right Turn
3- Fuel Gauge
4- NC
5- NC
6- Service Engine Soon
7- Upshift light
8- E-Brake light
9- Ground
10-illumination
11-NC
12-NC
13-NC
14-Left Turn

The 82 cluster:
Bottom:
1-Highbeam indicator
2-NC
3-NC
4-Ground
5-Choke
6-Brake
7-NC
8-NC
9-NC
10-Ground
11-Oil Pressure
12-Seat Belt
13-NC
14-Tach

Top:
1- Ignition to buffer
2- Left Turn
3- Right Turn
4- NC
5- NC
6- Ignition
7- Service Engine Soon
8- Temp
9- Fuel Gauge
10- Illumination
11- Ground
12- NC
13- Buffer Signal
14- Comptuer Ground to buffer


The pins on the 82 mentioning "buffer" are for the Vehicle Speed Sensor, not present on the 86 cluster.

Hope this helps you out.
Lemme know if you need anything else.

Eventually I'm planning to put all this information up on a web site.

 

The BBS software compressed my connector pin diagrams. They used to be spaced out equal. If you dont understand lemme know.

 

Alright. One question, do all the gauges work? I just want to change the gauge cluster, the rest of my dash is in perfect condition. Are your new gauges backlit, instead of front lit? Thanks for the advice, hopefully that should help. I appreciate it and will ask you any other questions as soon as I need your help. I am currently looking for a new cluster. Do i need the whole wiring harness from the engine? Do I use everything the same and just change the gauges? I heard that they wont work b/c the newer TA's gauges are ran off of computers, and the older ones are analog. Will they still work? Please let me know. Thanks.

 

I can only speak for the swap i did. All of my gauges work except the temp gauge but that is only because i forgot to hook it up after the engine swap, it will work when it is hooked up. Your current wiring harness will work, you do not need a new harness. You'll also need to address the speedometer issue. When I did my swap, while re-pinning the connectors I just store an extra pin from my donor car to use for the VSS input on the new gauges and disconnected and taped up the old wires that went to the speed sensor in the dash. The transmisison I installed was setup for VSS already, in fact that was the main reason for my swap (I do love the look tho, I have red backlight bulbs in there now, looks great), and I used all the VSS system parts (buffer box, connectors etc) from the donor car. I installed the buffer box under the dash, and ran the wires to the transmisison through the hole that the auto shifter cable was using. Used the same rubber grommet, so it fit nicely.

Also remember that if you have cruise, You'll need to install an entire new cruise system, which will require a new turn signal lever. I had my car so apart that this was not really a big deal, but with an intact car I imagine it would be. Or you could just live without cruise.


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82 T/A 305/TH350; soon to be 350/T-5

 

Also, I dont know of any thirdgens that have computer controlled gauges, since to move a needle like that it requires an analog signal anyway. And usually the ECM has seperate sensors from the gauge sending units.

Someong correct me if im wrong about this.

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82 T/A 305/TH350; soon to be 350/T-5