So I recently installed a Holley HP EFI system, so in my dash, the SES light no longer is necessary, along with most of the other bulbs. I'm looking at possibly fabbing up an entirely custom gauge cluster, but 3 bulbs I need to keep would be the Hi beam indicator, and the turn signal indicators. If I look on the back of the cluster, obviously we have the printed circuit. It appears that those 3 bulbs, as well as many others all share a common...line...wire...printed metal whatever!!! -assume this is a ground??? ...and then of course, they each have an individual "wire", and then these all run to either the left or right cluster where the printed circuit makes contact with some sort of contact point, and presumably an actual color coded wire, right??? Would it stand to reason I could find those 3 wires and just hook up a traditional wired circuit, with a good ground and then essentially put those 194 bulbs anywhere in the car I wanted? I/E, the back of my new gauge panel???

 

You might ask member johninri to see if he has a po out of the cluster like this.
http://www.austinthirdgen.org/mkport...ter_pinout.jpg

 

Yep, that's what I need....for an 89. ...in fact, I think I can trace the printed circuit back to the proper pin....I just need to have a little access from underneath to see which wire it is. SEEING it should be too hard, but actually ACCESSING and splicing in may be a whole nother ball game.

Thanks

 

I pulled my barely working instrument panel this winter and installed Autometer Ultralites 5" Tach and speedo, 2 1/16 water oil, fuel and oil gauges. I picked up a 1'x3' piece of 1/4 " ABS from the local plastic shop, enough for two patterns (goofed on the first one so good thing...). You're right the colour code wires are as Tuned indicates in the previous post, they feed into the two connectors. I unpinned the wires from the two main connectors, added about 6-8" to each one with the correct colour code wire (just in case I ever have to trace back a short) from a scavenged GM harness. And I wanted the extra length for servicing. There's no room to solder (for me) so I used butt connectors for everything. NAPA has green and blue indicator lights for turn and high beams fairly cheap but everybody sells leds as well.

I did pull the steering wheel and drop it to get some clearance when working on the project, you can connect all the lighting and grounds to one source, there's so little draw, it's not a problem. And I've seen where guys keep the white/beige plastic bucket and gut the s@#$ out of it so that the gauges fit. I took out everything; the 1/4" ABS is more than strong enough with all the torx screws around the circumference.

If my computer lets me post, here's a pic

 

Brian, that's exactly what I'm planning on doing. Well, different gauge set up, but from a production/fab point of view, that's what I wanna do.

Thanks for posting that.

 

Thanks. I have to say electrical work mostly scares the crap out of me but I'm reasonably good at reading instructions (and there's lots of threads here too) so I didn't find it too bad. Only problem I can see now is the steering wheel partially blocks things which I didn't allow for so either a new steering wheel or a minor redesign of the layout. But that's the easy part. Now that it's wired up, I can pull the whole thing out with room to spare, make up a new panel and just swap the gauges in.

Brian

 

I did a write up some time ago for my 91/92 cluster with speed hut gauges:
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/inte...i-made-my.html
Towards the bottom another member chimed in and showed how he did his 85/86 cluster.
RobGuitarGod also explained how he did his on his pre-90 cluster:
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/memb...ml#post6113458

 

OK cool...I see both of you guys did that.

...I'm going with Speedhut too. 95% options they offer, and 5" custom on my part. From what I can tell, Speedhut makes the gauges for Holley EFI set up too, which is originally what I was looking at.

 

I recommend the GPS speedometer. The only time it lost connectivity was in parking garages. The only other issue I had was when I was living in the Chicago region and I would be parked on a street by some tall buildings and I began driving quickly after starting the car. The GPS takes a moment to connect (usually by the time the engine has idled down it's connected) but if you have multiple tall buildings obstructing your skyline and you're moving before it connects it takes longer to connect. If it was already connected I never had problems while driving in the same area.

 

Yep, I'm going with GPS. Loved the idea, but was skeptical about performance. Didn't take much research to see that they work great. 99% of the reviews/opinions are positive, regardless of brand.

 

And those are are the two threads that I followed to help me through my build so thanks to both of them. I can also chime in and agree with Tibo about the GPS speedometer. Hindsight is a great thing. I have the early car so a mechanical speedo made sense, I thought, but the size of the thing and having to buy a custom speedo cable (ours are push on, Autolite is screw on) made it kinda of a PITA. Add our crappy Cdn dollar to the equation and I might have come out equal with less aggravation.

 

One thing I found when using a GPS speedometer is the lag between actual speed and illustrated speed. It's a little frustrating when trying to nail down a certain speed in a hurry. And possibly expensive if you're a couple of MPH above the accepted speed limit when getting on the highway and you pass John Q Law.

 

What GPS speedometer do you have? I haven't driven my Camaro in two years (under construction) but I don't remember any lag time when it was connected. Same thing with the speedometer app on my phone.

 

You should be able to isolate the hi beam/indicators.I did that, but kept them in the cluster.Also using speedhut GPS speedo.

 

I have a mechanical speedo in the Camaro and when using my Garmin GPS (to verify gearing), I can see that when accelerating onto the highway, the mechanical will show, for example 75 MPH while the GPS is at 72-73. Once up to speed and keeping a steady pace, the speedo and the GPS match. The same thing happens in my truck. It seems there's about a second or so for the GPS to pick up the signal and display it.
If you were only using a GPS and no speedometer for comparison, you wouldn't notice.
Those are my observations anyway.
As for Abubaca's question, I did just as described here. It was easy to follow the circuit board and trace the turn signal and high beam indicator path back to the connectors on either side of the steering wheel. It was then just a matter a matter of isolating the wiring in the harness and extending it to the LED bulb(s). Once the factory cluster is out, the wiring harness and connectors are relatively accessible.
At least that was the case with an 86 Camaro instrument cluster.