Instrument cluster on the '81 Chevy PU has a bad printed circuit. Rather than try to repair it I bought another IC on ebay. Need to set this odometer from 69K to my truck mileage of 46K.
Never attempted this before, what is the best way to do this?
TIA
Can you just swap the old speedometer into the ebay cluster? An '81 should still be a mechanical speedometer/odometer combo.
Yup, just take both apart and swap the speedometers around.
In reply to Rob_Mopar:
The ebay cluster is an '83, there's a minor difference in the speedo hookup on back of the cluster, not sure if the swap would be direct fit or not. Rather not tear E36 M3 apart anymore if I can help it but I can see if it works.
just throw the speedo in as is... no one will know or care about the extra 23k miles besides you..
or hook a drill up to it... it will read 60mph at 1000rpm, so that will be, like, a few minutes or something before you are at your target mileage.. just don't overshoot it or you'll have to put another 100,000 miles on it..
LMC Truck shows 79-87 as using the same speedometer.
Put it in, block it up, and run it in reverse, a la Ferris Bueller.
it'll change over, quite easily. done it several times.
the fun one was camaro cluster into impala. new one had 120k, car has 200k. took it out, chucked up in drill press set on slow, set vise to hold it, and walked away for an hour. the first one i had it set on fast and burned up the plastic gears.
On some older units. It was possible to remove the odometer and then turn the wheels to what ever you wanted.
Received the ebay cluster a couple days ago, nice clean example. Decided on the speedometer swap out. The speedometer retainer clamps were different, the '81 mounted to the IC case, the '83 to the speedometer case. The '81 clamp was useless on the '83 cluster, fortunately there was a blank hole on the '81 speedometer that the '83 clamp fit. Self tapping screw ftw.
Changed out the gauge face too. The needles were brittle as, well 30-some year old needles but managed a good one. The '83 odometer window doesn't line up exactly w/ the '81 odometer but close enough, ain't no show truck.
Found two dead stink bugs inside the '81 speedo guts, WTF. Now that coulda been a problem.
Tested all lamps w/ jumpers from the batt. while out, few were loose but good. Printed circuit board good.
Now I have all back lit gauge lamps, turn signals, high beam indicators, etc... even a clock fwiw.
Getting to the point I hate working on brittle old E36 M3. A few more parts and I'm calling the interior done.
Thanks for the advice guys, much appreciated.
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