Is there anything special that needs to be done to use all my stock gauges in my 87 camaro? I'm using a 1999 5.3L ls motor. how can I use my stock tach? I got the oil pressure working. what part number to use for the temp sending unit? got the volt meter. got gas gauge. What to do for mechanical speedo. I've heard people talk about using the temp sender from the 98 ls1 cars? does it have a fan switch built in it? Thanks!

 

The tach will work if you buy a baker electronics adapter box Hawks sells em. The tach pulse on LS1's is the same as 4cyl so if you just hook it up straight from your tach out off the PCM it will read half of actual. Temp sending unit I have read that some have used the 98 LS1 piece but thats all i know about it. For the gauge sender I drilled and tapped out the pass side head for mine and put the stock third gen one in worked slick and very easy. There are pipe nipple adapters you can buy if you dont want to drill and tap. Fan switch just use the stock 5.3 sender and switch via the PCM. Much better to do it that way then you can tune how you want the fans to react ( set temp on etc. )Mechanical speedo you can buy a signal converter box Hawks sells em there is a link in the LS1 swap sticky.

 

Thanks cam. 5.3 doesn't use electric fans tho.. It uses mechanical fans.

 

Are you using the 5.3 PCM? If so can it be tuned to operate the fans? This is ideally what you want to do

 

I remember reading somewhere that the pulse for the tach can be changed in the PCM as well.

 

I forgot about that but I recall that now too

 

I did that at first using an Autometer tach. It seemed ok until I checked with my programmer (I initially only tested to ~3500 rpm). I found out though the tach would get less accurate the higher the RPM went. So when I thought I was at 5800 rpm I was actually at 5000 or something like that. I tried tweaking the value but it just wouldn't work very accurately for me on both the low and high ranges. I switched the autometer over to 4 cyl mode and set the value back to default and it was dead on throughout the whole range.

 

I had problems with my Autometer tach getting it to work at all. One of the mods over at LS1tech put me onto a thread that suggested putting a 10K resistor + inline with the tach out signal and it worked like a charm

 

ok. I didn't know that. cool. Will the harness have to be repinned? or can it be added to a pin that's already there?

 

I'm not sure your going to have to look at the pin outs for your PCm and see whats all there. Even though I used a 99LS1 PCM there were still quite a few pins that were there that were never part of my donor car so maybe cooling fan relay is on the 5.3 I dunno as I said you'll have to check

 

I have a 6.0L LQ9 in an 89 IROC, for my temp I had my old sending unit cut down on a lath and then threaded to fit in the passenger side plug. For my tach I have it programed in my PCM and connected to my tach with a +12 feeding through a 10K resistor. My speedo isn't working yet, but TERF Inc. Speedchanger is what I'm probably going to use. On my PCM the fan output is not pinned, so if your's is like mine you will need to insert one. Hope this helps you out.
Ryan

 

How do you pin the fan output? or did you go a different route?

 

I haven't done it yet. Right now I just have a toggle switch. I'm going to try to use one of the other pins that I'm not using anymore. I havn't even tested it yet to see if the PCM has the electric fan option turned on.

 

I also just use a toggle switch for my fans, its easier that way to me.

We are going to go a different route with the gauges, we are not going to try to use the stock one's but we are going to try to rig some thing up to use different ones, kind of a custom dash, if you are intrested i will post up pictures, and explain a little further whenever we dive into it.

 

please do thanks

 

That would be great.
Thanks,