Hey guys,
Ive owned my 87 IROC-Z 350 tpi for a couple years now. But one thing has puzzled me about my gauge cluster. My speedo goes up to 160 and I have never seen any other camaro with a speedo up to 160. The highest ive ever seen is 140. Also my water temp and oil psi are in metric units. Is it possible my car was a Canadian car even though it was built in Ohio? Any input on this is appreciated guys.

 

rob, that always had me wondering when i saw your car.

i didn't notice that the other gauges were in metric, however.

hmmm..... interesting.

 

Show us a picture of it.

 

Yea a pic would be great, that's got to look weird. If no pic just answer this for me. Is the Kilometers the big # or is the Miles and hour that has the larger #'s?

Later, Garrett

 

Canadian thirdgens were built in the US and exported.

 

just took this pic a min ago outside in the rain, maybe this will shed some light on the subject

 

Well, whatever that is, it looks American, not Canadian, since MPH is on the outside and km/h is on the inside. The actual needle shapes remind me more of Pontiac and less of Chevy. Maybe it's just me, but I also find it really strange how it actually says "miles" above the odo reading..!?

Check for RPO Z49. If it's missing which it should be, then it's an American-sold car.

 

If I'm not mistaken, there was a picture of the same type of speedo posted here a couple years ago. I searched but the archives don't go back far enough.

I did find this though:

https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...peedometer+160

 

Actually, in 87, the speedo went to 145. Something else I noticed is the odometer. In 87, they were still using the 5 digit. The odo would show all 0's at 100k. You have the 6 digit odo. Must be a transplant from a newer vehicle. Your fuel guage is also different.

Could this be a homemade guage overlay. I noticed that your 40 mph is interrupted by a mounting screw. Look at mine. GM moved the 40 in to avoid being under the screw.

 

Your car has Canadian guages in it. But the speedo is not.

I've never seen anything like it.

 

looks too good to be homemade, imho. especially since there's been a few mentioned in the past too, not just this one. maybe you could post all your rpo's and we could look for some exotic never before seen rpo?

I do agree though it looks half american half canadian. only the RPO's will solve this mystery. Let's start by seeing if you have Z49 or not.

 

maybe someone had a 85mph speedo, and and converted it with some custom work?

 

Unfortunately my RPO sticker is long gone. Who knows what ever happened to it. Heck, im the 11th person to own this car since 1993 alone, and none of those people even lived outside of Ohio. The car is an 87 5.7tpi with basically every option except power and/or leather seats and a autodimming mirror. I did some research on this topic too by searching and no one else seems to know. I was just bringing up the question again to see if anyone had any new news on the subject. All the other cases of a 160 speedo in a car that people were asking about were also 87s. So thats why Im wondering if it were some rare factory option or something. I agree, having both metric and american guages is weird enough, but havin a 160 speedo is really weird. I hope someone can help me out here.

 

That's not factory, looks like Letraset Helvetica Condensed rub-on to me. Probably came from a speedometer shop, like a police car type job or something, which anybody can get done, not just police depts. I've done some tachs that way, although I usually at least made a half-assed effort to match the factory typeface.

 

I too, have seen this speedo. It's in a friend's '86 IROC-Z. We do not know its origin. Notice that this one appears identical to the pic above, but its odometer reads only to 99,999.9 whereas the one above reads to 999,999.9. Hmmmm..... the mystery deepens...

 

Does it read correctly, like when you're driving down the road, is it the correct MPH?

 

the 7-digit 160mph speedo also says "miles" in lowercase letters right above the mileage, and the 6-digit 160mph speedo does not have that. could this be one of those mysteries that's never solved? unless RB83L69 is right.

it would be interesting to know if both speedos report an accurate road speed, which would mean they underwent recalibration at one time or another

there seems to be some inconsistency relating to the position of the screws, especially the one at 40mph which is totally off between those 2 160mph speedos. also that round thing at 90mph is not exactly in the same spot. factory tolerances for speedometer paint were pretty damn strict, so these loose-looking ones could very well be aftermarket..

?

 

you would think that the paint markings would have to be dead on....

 

Ahh yes... the ol' 160 MPH speedo debate again! I too found one of these in the junkyard a couple years back. The first IROC's did not have a 145 MPH speedo (I believe this was true until about the middle of the 1986 production year), I once heard a story that a dealership in AZ converted several cars to the 160 MPH speedo (who wants a performance car with an 85 MPH speedo!?!?), but I think other dealers did it as well. Whether they got these from another source or had them custom made, I'm not sure. The faceplate style looks strangely similar to the one that was in my 1973 Capri GT. This was definitely not a factory item.

 

Here's my take on this.... Maybe Camaros slated for export to Europe got the 160. I do know for a fact that my friend's '86 IROC-Z with this speedo was in Europe for a time... Man, if Europeans saw an 85-mph speedo on such a hot looking car, they would laugh their heads off....

Willie

 

OK did no one else realize that the speedo in the first pic is in mph and the temp is in celcius. So they mixed metric and standard measurements . I don't think GM would do something like that, however I don't know why anyone would mixed the two?? So if this was an option there would be an RPO code for it, so I guess until someone can produce a legit RPO code or build sheet this is an aftermarket thing, huh?

Later, Garrett

 

I've seen this a couple times. I *think* I read about it on some aftermarket tuner car from the 80s. If I had to guess, I'd say that it was one of the 82-84 dual-needle speedos that had a normal needle put on with numbers that went all the way around. Anybody want to post a dual-needle speedo so we can compare positions?

I swear I remember seeing an 82 pacecar with that speedo.

The pic that Willie posted looks more legit to me. It's got the proper number of digits on the odo, plus the 40 mph is displaced to avoid the screw.

 

Its possible to repaint the face with different numbers and have the speedo recalibrated to whatever you want. I can post a pic of one we had done, its impossible to tell the difference between it and a stock one (in addition to the font, even the colors are correct), but it reads to 170 instead of 85. Its not from a thirdgen though. Was a couple hundred bucks to have it done.

 

Found it! August 1986 issue of Super Chevy magazine. Page 72 has an ad for The Corvette Clinic which released 160 mph speedos for the Camaros and the Monte Carlo SS.
I'll see if I can get the ad posted for everyone to see.

 

willie, that's what has me wondering. but if you look at the photo you posted, and the one 92rs posted, the 40 indication on his is partially hidden by the screw. makes me think it might be an aftermarket deal.

yeah, i caught on to that. i've also seen the car in person. it truly struck me as being weird.



jim, i don't think this is an 82-84 speedometer. i remember when my friend pulled the needle off my car's dual point speedo a few years ago, before i bought it. the gauge never worked right until he glued the needle back on.

i'll post a pic of my 84's speedo. it's sucky at best, but it's something to look at.

 

continuing on, by giving a rough look to willie's pic, 92's pic, and mine, their 80 is about where my 85 is.......

isn't the 85 on the dual point speedometer about where the 80 is on the 145 speedometers?

has me wondering also....

 

That's a very nice speedo if you ask me.I've never seen those before.

 

Did anyone catch David M's post amid all the fuss? I think David is right.

For one thing, any factory exports to Europe would have metric (kilometers) as the primary reading, SAE (miles) as the smaller reading on the inside. This rules out both of these pics as being factory equipment for Europe.

For another thing, the first 160 speedo posted in this thread looks like a Canadian/European export car, with those metric gauges. We all know that canada *also* uses metric as the primary measurement, just like Europe. So that speedo cannot be original.

So I conclude 1) the first one certainly is not factory, showing a mix of metric and SAE. 2) Being that the first one is not factory, it really throws into doubt the originality of the 2nd one. 3) The US is the only major country to use primarily SAE, so these speedos would have to be made in the US, and for US applications.

I find it most likely that both speedo's were purchased aftermarket through a catalog or magazine, and that the aftermarket company just didn't have great consistency in their markings (the 40mph mark, the 90mph hole thing, the word "miles" on one speedo but not the other). They probably had one template for 7-digit speedos and another template for 6-digit speedos. We see one of each in this thread. That's probably where the inconsistency comes from.

case closed as far as I'm concerned Now we just need to see that ad from Super Chevy for final proof.

 

makes sense that they could possibly have two templates.....

can we get a scan of that super chevy ad?

 

I saw David's post.

I just remembered that I saw an 85 TA with a 140 or 160 speedo in it. It looked fairly close to stock, aside of the numbers. If my post is still here I'll see if I can find it, I posted about the car a while ago. Only had 8,000 miles on it. Probably the same thing was done to that speedo, makes me curious because I've heard of this more than once.

Edit... found it. It was a 160 speedo.

 

Thanks to David M for mailing me the original page out of the '86 Super Chevy mag!

I'll have it on here very shortly.

and David I promise I'll give ya a call one of these days about the factory pics.. it's long overdue, I apologize.

GT

 

Here we go.. this will put the mystery to rest once and for all. My scanner is having a bad day, but clearly this is the one we're all confused over (bottom of the two). It's an aftermarket speedo; end of story


Edit: changed pic to clearer one

 

cool, looks different though..

 

I don't see anything different about it. What exactly do you see?

 

Looks the same to me and seems to have solved the mystery.

 

that monte carlo speedometer looks like the same pattern as the decal carried by lauren engineering.

but glad that someone figured this out.

 

think the corvette clinic is still opened and selling these units? i wouldn't mind haveing a 160mph speedo

 

Wasnt that speedo designed for the berlinettas because the 145 mph unit would break at about 160 or 170?

 

They made a Berlinetta that could actually do 145??

 

If im not wrong this is aftermarket . I know i saw someone who sold these units in a magazine. Im going to have a look at ít.
(Metric system rules)

 

 

ROTFLMAO!!!!!

 

Does anyone know what one of these 160 speedos would sell for?

 

They're so rare that it's not likely that there's a specific "going rate" for them. If you find one, expect to pay a lot.

 

Actually, I have one of these in a parts car I just bought and was wondering how much to sell it for.
Thanks, Tony

 

.

 

i think that is a speedometer that madmax was referring to earlier in this thread.

 

Thats actually an 82-84 dash (82 I'd assume by the signature) but probably the same idea. Sorry I cant help on the origins... could be a production item (edit:aftermarket production), or a one off repaint/recal.

 

.

 

bird gauges:

82 - white needles, million-mile odo, 0/30/60 oil, 6K tach w/ 5K redline

83-84 - orange needles, 100,000-mile odo, 0/40/80 oil, 8K tach w/ 6K redline

gotta be 83-84. sounds valid for an 84 15th. I mean the dash, not the 160mph add-on.