How can I get a higher speedo for my 82. Will the later gauge inlays work for my car. Also on a different note, my oil and temp do not work in the dash, (probably because of the engine swap) how do I make them work... or can I?

Thanks

 

I'm looking for the same thing..... if you want I guess you will have to fit a aftermarket spedo in there..... I guess it could work, it will just look different. as for the oil and temp..... check to make sure the wires are hoocked up to a good connection to the sending units. check the fuse, and last check the guage pod, seems all the wires "plug" in and it may be that its not making a connection there.

 

can make the speedos out of later f-bodies fit in your 82'. pay close attention to the way the speedometer is driven, later thirdgens use an electric speed sender earlier ones use a mechanical cable.

 

so does anyone know the answer???

There has to be some one out there with an 82 that has over an 85mph gauge right???

How did you do it???

(but hey, I have a good excuse when I get pulled over; I say that the speedo said I was only going 85... heh heh... Yeah, its a bad excuse acctually

 

federal goverment (carter administration) passed a law that no vehicle sold in the US after 1980 could have a speedometer that exceeded 85MPH. the misguided law was later repealed in 1984.

traffic in many parts of the country moves at faster than 85MPH on the highway. is nice to know whether you're doing 87MPH or 107MPH.

1982 f-bodies never came from the factory with a speedo that read higher than 85MPH. so you've got a couple options:

swap in a speedo from another year vehicle. if you put an electric sender speedo in your vehicle, you'll have to swap out the sender in the transmission and do some wiring.

put an overlay on your current speedometer with new MPH numbering, then swap out the speedo gear and figure out a way to send an accurate VSS reading to the engine computer.

 

what about buying an aftermarket spedo & tach that will fit in the holes, modify the guage pod and mount those in there. has anybody ever done this? I think it might look pretty good........

 

check out the body and interior board, a few people have posted pictures of their custom autometer setups. be warned autometer guages are not cheap and the cluster swap will require some metal fabrication skills.

if you still have the engine computer in the car or are planning on converting to tpi at some point in the future, make sure that you'll have a valid vss signal when finished with the project.

 

thanks for all your help but no one has really answered my question. Will the other year guages work for my car. Will a 1985 speedo work for my 82??

Are the guages interchangeable??!!!!

Some one some where has to have done this, right?

 

why an '85 speedo
they still used the stupid 85 mph speedo

 

so back to the question..... is there a different spedo that goes higher that can just be put in?

 

I don't know how much money you are willing to spend but I do have a solution.
I have a 1984 z-28 that I bought a digital dashboard for.
It's made by cyberdyne insturments.
It's very simple to install.
It's a dash panel that slides into your existing dash cluster housing.
If you have all gauges all you do is remove the analog gauges,connect the clips as instructed, slide the panel in, hook the speed sender unit to the trans where the speedo cable plugs in, run two wires to the speedo on the new panel, connect them, put the cover on(it also comes with a piece of tinted glass so the dashboard lookes blacked out when the car is shut off) then your ready to go.
All sorts of cool lights and stuff on it.
I don't know haow fast the speedo really go's but I know mine went to 140mph no problem.
Right now I have mine disconnected but am going to reconnect it shortly. When i do I will take pictures and post them here.
Almost forgot, if oyu have the stupid red lights on your dash,
all you have to do is get the sending units install those and it should work.
I bought this 9 years ago and it was expensive then.
If I do come across a factory gauge that will just plug in then i will post it here.

 

Though I would dig this up from the grave lol. because its interesting.

Lets lookit the mechanical stuff and how it works, simple... A gear on the tail peice of the trans that goes to a speedo cable. The only thing regulating how fast the speedo will rotate is that gear and he woulnt be touching it. So reguardless what you do with the dash, the cable behind the dash still spins at the same rpm. So, all he is doing is changing the speedo and if you look at the back of a mechanical speedo all it is, is this rod with magnets on it and the faster it spins the more force it applys to spin the needle which doesnt actually seem to touch the magnets or any other moving part. So... would it matter if there were slightly larger magnets on the rod? or more slightly smaller ones? Would it make that big of a difference? Maybe not... so theoretically you should be able to just swap the speedo head and hope that the cable attaches just fine to the back of the speedometer, and if not some small hardware should fix that. But.. woulnt this be correct?