I'm new and not sure if this is the correct place to post so if not I'm sorry.

What I'm looking to do is remove the stock gauge cluster and put in a custom one with individual gauges. I'm curious how hard that is to do? I've never worked with gauges and also could I still have the indicator lights such as the 4WD, battery, etc?

The reason I'm looking to do this is because the gauge cluster wasnt working when I got the truck only the tach and after looking around in the truck wires are cut and will be a lot of work figuring out all the little problems are.

I guess one other question is can you run a custom wire harness for the 22r and still keep things like the indicators in the dash?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

I am not the best at wiring and from reading your post I assume you are not either. Not criticizing you, just the way that I read it. These harnesses do get cut up quite a bit. I am not sure if there is an aftermarket harness available for these, but even as weak as I am on electric, I have swapped several harnesses. I would suggest looking for a replacement harness. The harnesses seperate in several places and is not as bad to swap out as it may seem. You may only need one section of it.

I have worked on the first gen trucks and I will say even trying to add SR5 to a non SR5 is not quite as easy as the next generation of trucks. It might even be easy to just replace the section of harness with the missing connectors. I have had to do plenty of that as well.

Unless you are really good at reading schmatics or have an aftermarket that supports you real well, I would not suggest it. Just my opinion.

 

You could do the custom thing with one of the Painless Performance customizable harnesses here:
http://www.painlessperformance.com/w...v.php?sl=10140

They come with every circuit needed to do a complete rewire for everything on these trucks (You'll lose you emissions though) plus it has a handful of accessory circuits for anything else you need to add further down the road. Painless harnesses are REEEALLY easy to work with because not only are the wires color coded, they are also labeled. So the headlight wires say "Headlight" and the dome light wire says "Dome Light" on it and so on. You don't need a masters degree in electrical engineering to use their products. I helped a friend rewire his '68 Camaro and it only took us a weekend. I think the hardest part was having to wrap it all in tape once we got it done.

I'm actually going to rewire my truck with a Painless harness eventually. Since I'm doing a full restoration, I want to get everything back together, fire it up and run it for a while to make sure I don't have any problems. I have a lot of new parts meshed in with some older parts and I know that my original harness worked well when I took it out so I want to make sure everything works before I through in one more electrical variable.

You could probably still make your factory cluster work properly though. The wiring in these trucks isn't all that difficult - Most of the time it is just a bad ground. If you take the cluster out and follow the wires from each gauge, you should be able to find your problem. And if your speedometer isn't working, it's mechanical so you'll likely just need a new speedo cable.

It might not hurt to look for a good used wiring harness - plenty of them out there if you search around through the classifieds for people parting out trucks.

 

or you could ditch the dash all together and do something like this https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f229/79-83-dash-269030/ .. make everything up as you go


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Or you could do that ^^

Sorry Corey, forgot you were making those

 

Basically you are asking how hard it is to hook up gauges to a custom cluster because your cluster wiring is cut right? If so I think it would be easier to change the wiring (not very hard) rather than build a custom cluster but if you really want to do it it's up to you.

First you absolutely need a wiring diagram for your year, I know some wire colours on my 81 aren't the same as the 83 diagram I followed. You need a multimeter and know how to use it.

4wd: I imagine you wire up the original wires that go from the t-case to any type of light you want to use, maybe the wires on the t-case aren't the only one but you will see that in your wiring diagram and you can test with a multimeter when in low.

Coolant gauges, it depends if you use a mecanical gauge (with a tube and fitting that must be bolted to a coolant passage) or electrical (wired to a coolant sensor).

Oil press. again either mecanical or electrical

Fuel gauge, easiest would be to use the cut up wires in the dash to any kind of electrical fuel gauge, but I don't think all gauges are compatible.

Rpm: 3-4 wires, by memory one to coil, negative, 12v for light

Speedo: No clue, but if you can find a mecanical one that fits your speedo cable that would be the best I imagine if not you'll need a speed sensor.