Complete box panther gauge installation how-to

[85crownHPP]

what a jip!!! call em up and demand a sender lol

[85crownHPP]

I forgot the pictoral tutorial on the Sunpro LED backlighting... silly me.

[p71towny]

:bump: Whoa, could I update all my 194s in my dash to led's, no burnout and nice and bright. Jonny 5 needs more input.

[85crownHPP]

you sure can! They have lots of 194 LED replacements on Ebay.

[p71towny]

[gadget73]

Only thing with LED bulbs is they tend to be a bit directional. The lighting might not spread nice and evenly like standard bulbs.

[85crownHPP]

Actually, depending on the cluster, you might want the directional type bulbs. I noticed in the 90-91 speedos they use fiber-optic like materiel to channel the light to the outer face of the speedo. The little collector sits right in front of the bulb, so it might work better like that.

My older speedo doesnt work like that , so I used a side emitting style (inverted lense) LED replacement

[BlackHawkA4]

Hey, Installing a tach. What's a good place to put the wire from inside the car to the engine bay? Didn't see it if you posted it.

[85crownHPP]

i ran my wires through a hole near the brake booster

[Paul_]

Dumb question, but what are the thread sizes for the senders? For example, 1/2" by 14npt.... What is ours? I'm referring to the oil pressure and the temp gauges. I'll have to determine trans temp at another time lol. The reason I ask is because I'm looking next year to install a set of Dakota Digital gauges(trans temp, volts, oil pressure, coolant temp)right above my hvac controls. Unfortunately they do not come with senders.

[gadget73]

oil pressure is 1/4" NPT pipe thread. Not sure on the temp sender but its a standard size. I want to say 1/2".

[monterey1962]

TACHOMETER

the only hard part is figuring out where to put it!

simply tap into the coil, here it appears to be in the green wire.

What did you use for a key on power source for the tach? Also, what did you tap for the light source? What gauge wire should be used to extend the tach wire to the coil?

How hard is it to get through that hole in the firewall and under the dash? Anything to watch out for?

[monterey1962]

One more thing: Will hooking in the gauges interfere with the EFI comp? Do I have to set it up so that the idiot lights and wiring are still connected?

[gadget73]

What did you use for a key on power source for the tach? Also, what did you tap for the light source?

I tapped off something in the fuse box. The radio fuse I think. They make these neat little doohickys that plug in place of a fuse, then the fuse plugs into the top of it as a power tap. Its a small black thing about the size of a fuse with a short pigtail coming from it. I found them in Advance I think. Same thing for the lights, its tapped off the dash light fuse. Dimmer even works correctly that way, which frankly surprised me.

What gauge wire should be used to extend the tach wire to the coil?

I think I have 16 or 18 ga or something. Whatever I had laying around. It doesn't need to be very thick as its not carrying any substantial amount of current.

How hard is it to get through that hole in the firewall and under the dash? Anything to watch out for?

I fished it through a grommet that had been previously removed under the brake booster. Nothing special to watch out for, tho the grommets can be a bastard to poke through. I've actually just drilled holes in the rubber grommets before to fish wiring through.

One more thing: Will hooking in the gauges interfere with the EFI comp? Do I have to set it up so that the idiot lights and wiring are still connected?

No. The idiot light sender circuit is totally independant of the ECM. The engine temp sender for the computer is over by the thermostat in a fitting between the heater core hose and the manifold, and the ECM doesn't monitor oil pressure.

[monterey1962]

Thanks for the info.

Here's the fuse tap I went with (actually, it's the only one I could find in town).



What size fuse should the tach need? 5amp? 10amp? Can this be used as the power source for the other gauges? If so, what size fuse could I get away with?