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**raser13** · 06-07-2007, 05:19 PM

The easiest way to begin is to start with the swapping out of senders. The oil pressure one is the easiest. It’s on the driver’s side of the engine just under the oil filter. You just undo the wire unscrew the sender and screw in the other sender and plug the wire back on. See easy!

the coolant is the next one you will want to install.it's located on the intake manifold just behind the distributer. simply undo the one wire from the sender and unscrew the sender install the new sender and clip. you will notice that the original sender is a one wire set up while the new one is a two wire one. not a problem, the black wire simply gets grounded out to the car,i just used the bolt for the alt. bracket that goes into the intake manifold,and then the other wire goes to the single wire that was for the old sensor. this is were the wire stripers and the wirenuts,soldier, or neat clippy thingees come into play.and wahlaah the coolant sender is done.now while your under the hood you may want to get some other wires ran at this time.

first we'll start with the fuel flow wire, this is the one off the brain on pin #34, at least it is on an '84 crown vic make shure to refer to your diagrams.(if you already have a tripminder ignor this step) to do this you will need the wire from a donner cars brain clip. next undo the clip off the brain it's located on the firewall under the brake booster. i believe it was a 1/2 in socket and you will probably need an extention and a swivel socket. once the clip is off you will need to locate the spot on the white plastic that the wires are going through and drill a hole for the wire to go through. you will also need to remove the red platic retainer from the front of the clip, i used a pocket knife to pry it lose.next insert the metal clip and wire threw the back of the clip untill it locks back in place and insure that none of the other wires moved,if so push them back in, and then push the red plastic retainer back in and tighten back down the clip. if you want to run the wire through the fire wall and the behind the dash to where the guage cluster is this is the best time to do it i recomend the speedo gromet since once we're you won't need the speedo cable any more.

**raser13** · 06-07-2007, 05:32 PM

the next wire to be added is the tach wire . the tach is a pulse counter and gets the signal from the coil. you will need a good length of wire for this one easyest way, or at least the way i found to do this is to start by running the wire through the fire wall from the engine bay to the place in the dash where the cluster go's and tie it off. agian i would use the speedo gromet. then back in the engine bay i followed the wiring harness around the fender towards the coolant resevior and then across the gap to the coil on the motor making shure that once i had the length i went back and electrical taped around the wire to the wire harness to protect the wire from heat and leaking pretroleum products. this is where i like those little clipee things that alllow you to clip into the wire with out cuting into them. you simply need to patch into thegreen with yellow colored wire and wahla and the tach wire is ran and ready to be tied into the digi cluster. more on that later.

next on our list is that tricky and DANGEROUS!!! fuel sender as i said above you will need one out of a lincoln, or a grand marq with a digi dash since the one in the cougar is made for a car who's tank sits flat and ours sits diagonaly behind the back seat. :cops: this step is quite DANGEROUS and potentialy DEADLY!!!! so pay direct attention to what i say next.there is a lock ring that holds the fuel sender onto the tank. this ring has to be persuaded off the car, this can be done without droping the tank but you will want a fairly empty tank or you will get a bath in fuel!!!NEXT CONCERN ,AS MENTIONED ABOVE THE WAY TO TAP THE LOCK RING AROUND IS WITH SOMTING THAT WHEN IT HITS STEEL CANNOT SPARK!!! BRASS IS A GOOD EXAMPLE OF THIS AS IS WOOD BLOCKS OR RUBBER MALLETS. DO NOT USE JUST A STEEL HAMMER,HAMMER ON A SCREWDRIVER, OR A STEEL PUNCH!!! THIS CAN CAUSE A SPARK AND CAUSE THE 15 GALLON GAS TANK THAT YOU ARE UNDER THE CAR OR IN CLOSE PROXIMITY TO INTO A 15 GALLON GAS AND METAL GERNADE!!! WICH IF IT DON'T KILL YOU AND ANY KIDS OR A WIFE OR ANYONE ELSE AROUND YOU'RE ALL GOING TO WISH YOU WERE. I'M NOT TRYING TO TELL YOU THAT THIS IS GOING TO HAPPENTO ANYONE BY CHANGING THIS OUT, I'VE DONE THIS A FEW TIMES MYSELF AND I AM NO WHERE NEAR A MECHANIC, I JUST WANT YOU TO RESPECT THE POSIBILY OF EXPLOSIVE POWER HERE SO THAT YOU WILL DO THIS SAFELY:cops: . If you feel this is to dangerous please take this to a mechanic to do.if you do decide to do this is all you have to do is carefully and safely tap the ring aroud untill it is all the way off. you can tell when. and remove the old fuel sender and unclip it.and reverse to install the new one. ta da. now keep in mind the guage will be alittle inacurate. this sender was made for a 15 gallon tank and the cluster was made for 20 gallons. now don't worry full is still full and empty is still empty, 1/4 is still 1/4 and so on the only differnce is when you look at the gallons remaining on the new cluster it will not be correct but the bar graph is still right.keep in mind if you don't get this done in time your gas guage will be backwards.

next you will need the speed signal. this is the one that is down by the emergancy brake, if you have cruise controll, that you read about that no one can seem to find every time someone asks how to install the tripminder because they can't seem to get the search to work.(don't start to grumble we've all had that problem so don't say anything about newbies. you know who you are.) this one is really easy look at the pic and fallow along first tie into the green wire. again i would sugest the use of those clippee things they work great for not damaging the wires especially if you might want to reverse this process some day. next run the length of wire up to the back of the cluster and leave it for now.

now for the new cluster you will need a switched power sorce other than the one that the original anolog cluster had. this is for the bank of six lights that illuminate the cluster all the time that your other cluster just did not have. i used the trunk popper power for this. you could use the swiched for the old cluster to run the lights and the entire cluster as well but i don't like to over do it on one wire. real easy just snake a wire from the cluster hole behind the dash to the glove box and open it up and get the releases to let go so it will come forward more and tie into the power side of the popper button. this may sound stupid but don't get confused on which side to tie into and tie into the trunk side of the button because your cluster will only light up when you hit the button. use a multi meter, my brother did this on a tempo when getting a signal for an aftermarket radio oops.**one note i have not been able to figure out how to wire in the light swich for a digital cluster yet. what this means is untill i do your guage cluster will bee one brightness day or night. no dimming. you could add a dimmer of your own but the cluster is'nt really dim during the day and not to bright a t night. you'll have to see for yourself if this is someting you'll really want to add.**if anyone figures out how to install the headlight switch for the digi cluster so it will stay lit when lights are off but dim at night i would be glad to here how you did it. it would add that little bit of extra stockness to it.

**raser13** · 06-07-2007, 05:46 PM

now comes the fun part, deconstuction!!!!! this area is where the hacksaw blade is about to be your best friend! first off you will need to remove the surround around the cluster you have in the car and the cluster. this requires the two clips one on each side and the speedo cable. i undid my speedo by reacting up from down by the brakes. it's a little easer to get to that way. once at this stage you will be looking at a pocket with three holes in it one for each clip and one for the speedo cable. the entire back wall of this pocket must go. a hacksaw blade with an area wrapped in electrical tape works wonders.** one note be careful when you cut there is several wire harnesses that run behind the cluster and the saw blade will make short work of them and you wont know it till your halfway or better through them. it took me two days to soldier and heatshrink them all back together. oops.**if you are needing the car to drive at this point you will need to leave the spots where the four screws go so you can still reinstall the original cluster untill you are ready for the final rewire once all of this is gone we need to start on the cluster

ah,the cluster. first off let's get you a little familiar with the lay out. on the back you will notice two clips one small and one large like the one on your car. also you will notice a circuit tape like the one on your cluster. most of this is useless to us.or at least it was to me since it mostly deals with the idiot lights. this cluster gives you gauges that cover all of the things that the idiot lights do and when somthing is wrong on the gauge there are red bars and they flash at you when they are outside the exeptable peramiters. so you really don't need the idiot lights. we'll start with the big clip. there is only like two things that we really need off of this clip one is the altenator resistor which is mounted on the housing about in the middle you will need to remove this since we won't be using the back housing either. the other thing you will need to look at is if you look at the side of the cluster you will notice that there is a thin piece of the circuit tape routing over here. it only has two circuit lines running through it this is the illumination for the three screens. i got around using the circuit tape by using a three prong clip off of a power button off of an old computer i had laying around.(if you take the circuit tape clip off of the clip you will notice that there are thee prongs not two like i expected to find)one wire to ground one wire to the switched power from the glove box.

**raser13** · 06-07-2007, 05:52 PM

now we'll look at the small clip. this is the one that all of the signals to the guages and the power for it all are going to tie in.

next if you undo the screws that hold the clear plexi to the front and undo the two clips one on each side of the cluster you will be able to remove the back white portion of the cluster.

you willl also have to remove the clip from the light strip that i mentioned on the big clip area. what is left is what we will pretty much be using for the rest of this process. you shoud have the black front portion of the outer housing, the inner housing(consisting of a white plastic housing with two circut cards attached one that the small clip plugs into and one that runs long the bottom of the housing,and a circut set-up that all of the lights are on running the length of the back. and thats about it.

with this in hand you will need to undo the five screws that hold the inner housing to the black portion of the outer housing. this is so we can cut the black portion down to fit in our hole where the original cluster went.the hacksaw blade is again your friend. just cut where the picture shows and reinstall onto the inner housing.

also this is the best time to do the color change mod as detailed at this link.XXX INSERT COLOR CHANGE LINK XXX now we're ready to start the re-wire

**raser13** · 06-08-2007, 06:27 PM

http://highshirts.ifrance.com/cougar/digdash/

here is the color change link that i forgot to put in the post above. also instead of using the clearish sulifane like he did i went to wally world and baught a 88 cent blue folder(you can use any color you want). and did this:

you could also replace the lights with colored l.e.d.s and just replace the green colored plastic with a foggy clear plastic. the reason you want foggy is if you just remove the green plastic the colored l.e.d.s can't difuse and you'll have just pin points of light. you will also be able to see through the numbers and see the inside of the housing and it wont look that good.

**raser13** · 06-08-2007, 06:32 PM

now if your using this car as a daily driver this step is best left to the weekend just incase something goes wrong you'll have time to fix it and not at three a.m. so you can try to get to work the next day. once you start this step there is no turning back!!(you can always rewire it back to original you'll just have to reverse everything)step one remove the trim from around the cluster and remove the cluster. now your going to have to decide how you want to do this. you can either clip wires in two and use wire nuts,or you can use those clipee tings that i like or you can cut the wires and soldier and heat shrink all of the wires. keep in mind the last option will more than likely need a long extention cord and a good knowledge of how to soldier.

**raser13** · 06-10-2007, 02:10 AM

now lets begin first break out those pesky pin out wiring diagrams

keep in mind if you don't happen to have an '84 crown victoria you will need the diagram for your car in stead. now before you go troding out to the car with cluster and diagrams in hand i have a small suggestion. First sit down at a table with both diagrams and a clean peice of notebook paper and start with position one on the cougar cluster and work your way around and mach up signal for signal. For instance; position #2 on the cougar cluster is a ground, so i look at my pin out and find a ground like the one on pin #15 on the crown victoria. and so on, and so on, and then just make a cross over chart so you'll know what wire is going where before you even begin. It speeds things up conciderably. Here's an example:

HTML Code:

COUGAR PIN POSITION               WIRE COLOR              FUNCTION               CROWN VICTORIA PIN POSITION                           WIRE COLOR                      
     

           2                      black                   GROUND                            15                                         black

           4                     red/white             temp. input                           1                                         red/white

and then you just keep going. now you will also have to remember that the idiot lights on the crown vic are now guages so the temp. warning light is now going to the wire for the guage input instead .then you go out to the car and make it happen.** one note is that this cluster has an anti theft system to it. With out the power and ground inputs to this part the cluster will not work!! i tryed working with this cluster years ago and could not get it to work and thats why.**that is the hole reason i originally was working with the '87 fox body style cluster for this car and got it almost done it just needed to be made pretty, when i was tinkering with this '91 MN-12 style and got it running and decided to go with it and i am so glad i did.

**raser13** · 06-10-2007, 02:25 AM

now before i hooked the alt. input wire up to the cluster i had to insert the resistor that i had removed off of the back of the outer hausing back into the system. previosly the input came from the alt. wnet into the large clip through the circut tape across the resistor and back out the the large clip to a wire that went into the small clip and to the display.

since i eliminated the large clip and the outer housing i simply used two self tapping screws to mount the resistor to the back of the hole that the cluster fits into then just tightened the input wire to the one side and the wire on the small clip to the other and wah la an accurate alt. guage. the reson i did not place the resistor on the back of the inner housing was that i wanted to have this cluster to be able to come out without having to undo anyting but a clip just like stock. for those of you wondering it didn't dawn on me to do this untill i went to put the wires on the alredy mounted resistor on the back of the inner housing.

**raser13** · 06-10-2007, 02:32 AM

now most of you are going to laugh pretty hard when you see how i installed this so i could get it centerd. this was meant to be a quick fix 'till i could figure somthing more permanent out but the old addage that if it ain't broke don't fix it came into play. simply put, i tied an extra length of wire that i had laying around to the holes that the screws went that held on the plexi to the front of the housing and then just ran the wire through the three spots that the srews go into to hold the trim piece onto the dash. then i just kept re-adjusting the wire length by putting the trim on and seeing what needed to be moved, moved it and re-tied the wire and repeated the process untill it was just right.

**raser13** · 06-10-2007, 03:08 AM

now you can place the buttons anywhere you like. me i dont smoke anymore( took getting broncial pnumonia for three mounths to finaly clear me out enought to quit. i had been trying to quit for over seven years.) so i looked to the worthless ashtray and made up a cover out of an old plastic for sale sign that i cut to size, mounted the buttons, and painted interior color then i realized there was one button that i used alot, one i used very infrequently, and the rest not at all. the one i used all the time was the select button. this one is the one that cycles through the selections on the tripminder pod. the one i used somtimes is the reset button, this is used to reset like the trip odometer to zero, and zero out the fuel economy averages on the tripminder.first off i don't use the trip odometer that much if ever also it resets itself every time you shut off the car anyway. the average economies work better if you don't reset them so i figured i only really needed one button, and that was the select button.so i went about recovering the ash tray as a cubby to hold like emergency quarter for the phone, a camera, and such. so i looked to the lighter that i don't even have hooked up anymore,i only use the wires as a test 12v power and a test ground. and since it pushes in like a button already i took it apart drilled a few holes, after i removed the nut and bolt that hold the back together and removed the ceramic disk and the locking part off the bottom of the lighter housing.

i inserted a button off of the l.e.d. packs i get at o'rileys auto parts. you can do this with any button. it just has to be one that doesn't lock in the down position, like the one on the front of your computer to turn it on. you have to have one that pushes down and pops right back up. i used the ones for the l.e.d. packs because i've got like a hundred of them and nothing else to use them on.

i knew i was saving them for something, i just couldn't bring myself to throw them away. all i did was solder on the wire i had coming from the cluster to one side of the botton. and the other i soldered a wire that i used to tap into the lighter ground wire with one of those clip thingies.

now i tried the lighter as is and found it was just not long enough to hit the button so a little superglue and four pennies later; it works.

before anyone can yell about defacing money the only reason i used pennies was that the ashtray that i had gained back was right next to the lighter just happend to have four pennies. so, i did a size comparison just to see and they fit perfect. it was worth 4 cents

for the aggrivation it saved me to find a washer that fit. it was cheaper than the washers it would have taken to do the same job.

**raser13** · 06-10-2007, 03:22 AM

now, since i eliminated the large clip, the only other items i deemed worthy of needing to keep, is the blinkers and the highbeam indicators, which are not located on the small clip. i haven't gotten around to doing the install on these yet. but, what i plan to do is drill holes on the black outer housing face and cut the film off the un-used portion of the cluster. then glue them over the holes and run l.e.d. lights to them. the black wire goes to the ground. then the red wires go to the different blinker and high beam signals. so if you want to do this you can go ahead and do so at this time. i would recommend not using superglue to hold the film to the outer housing. it will turn the film white and make it useless. that's why mine is not done. i would use elmer's glue, yes just like the stuff you used in first grade. it dries clear and won't discolor the film.

if anyone has any questions on anything here just let me know and i will be glad to help you out. most of all have fun with your new cluster and more guages than just the speedo and fuel. you don't have to look for a place to put aftermarket guages, and you don't have to even mess with round bezels in a car wher everything else is a square.

sincerly,
roger phillips
a.k.a. raser13

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digi guage cluster write-up

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