Little Elger

The tranny donor truck I drug home is a sr5, mine is a Dlx I think, anyway, the donor hass a cluster with a tach and I would like to have it, it also has the gauges in front of the shifter that I would like to have. Question is, will it work in my truck or doi have to modify the wiring harness or what. They are both 82 models.
Does anyone have one of these in their shop? I found him in mine this evening, usually don't see them in November.

KryptoRoxx

Nice find...you have an anti rat and human device. Put him in charge of dealing with grumpy customers lol.

I think you are going to have to splice in some wires to your harness though. If you have both harnesses though it will take a while but should be possible.

Little Elger

I disconnected the injectors for safety.

Little Elger

Krypto do you just splice into the existing harness with fresh wire from the guages in front of the shifter? Will the existing plug for the cluster work with the sr5 cluster or will I have to run a new wire for the tach?

KryptoRoxx

I wouldn't see a problem with fresh wire as long as its the same resistance as the old stuff. Plug may or may not work depending on whether Toyota had one harness for their trucks.....or all different.

83

"Splice" is too strong a word, if it's anything like my 83. You just have to pull the plugs out of the back of one cluster, and plug them into the right place in the new cluster. Easier said than done...but no cutting of wires.

For my truck I needed to run a wire to the coil for the tach. But it's so variable between years, it's really hard to say.

There was no need to splice a single new wire into the harness for me. I had to run one new wire from the cluster to the coil for the tach.

The only splicing I needed to do was to get the seperate oil and volt gauge working. Everything else was unplugging the wires from one gauge and figuring out where to plug them into the other. The ONLY thing in the new cluster which the old one didn't have is the TACH. That is the only thing. So no splicing necessary.

IF you also have the seperate oil & volt guage, you'll need to do a little splicing.

83

Ah sorry I didn't read well enough before posting.

Yes, fresh wires from oil & volt gauge. It's really pretty simple if you have an FSM. IF the 82 is anything like my 83, once you get the main gauge working, the little oil & volt gauge is childs play.

FSM will tell you what each of the wires plugging into the back of the main gauge are for.

For the seperate oil & volt gauge:

Get an oil pressure sending unit. What you have now is a switch. It powers the idiot light, not a pressure gauge. Hook up an oil pressure switch to your gauge, you fry the gauge. This new sending unit will need to be threaded into one of the oil galley plugs in your engine block. No big deal, just take an allen wrench and take one out, thread the sending unit in with some teflon tape. Run a wire from it to the gauge. I believe, in this case, the sending unit is the GROUND.

Beyond that, all you need to do is find which wires coming out of the little gauge do what. I cut off the plugs, labled the wires, then found where they needed to go. There are 4 things. 1.Oil pressure power and ground + 2. the illumination light 3. Volt meter and ground + 4. illumination light.

What I did, is look in the FSM to where the mini gauge connected to the main gauge and spliced accordingly. But in reality all you need to do is find the correct power source. Illumination wires need to splice into something which has power when your headlights are on. Oil pressure ground goes to the sending unit.

Here is my link. https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f114...e-swap-164182/ It will show you exactly how to do this, for MY TRUCK. Which is an 83. I beleive very strongly that 82 is different, and not even all 83's match up to the FSM-described wire colors. If you're lucky yours is easier than this and I'm just mucking up the matter. But if nothing else, your process for attaching the mini cluster will be basically the same.

I would say, just try plugging the new gauge in the way the old one was. Maybe it will work! For mine, only one turn signal worked. And that makes sense if you look at the FSM diagram. That's the only plug location the SR5 and non-SR5 have in common. But 82 might be different!

Anyway, my thread should be a good reference. You can ask me questions...but I'll admit, after doing it, don't have everything "figured out". It was a lot of trail and error. I got buried real deep in it, addressed problems as they came up, not everything was as the FSM said it should be. I got it all working, and don't remember all what I did, and a lot of your specifics will be different. But if you have any questions, feel free to ask! If I can help, I will.

It's really not so complicated, but it can be frustrating...

83Toyota88

iTrader: (1)

I have really been wanting to get the SR5 cluster for my truck so I can have a tach. same with the guage pod above the shifter. Watch them on ebay alot. I have a super sun tach mounted externally on mine right (I somehow fried it though). But i have also seen a small tach at Autozone that looks to be the same size as the filler hole in my cluster and I think I can make that work. This tach is black with white accents like the factory stuff so It would pretty clean.

KryptoRoxx

I will say that the tach in the dash doesn't like the cold so you might be better off with you external tach lol.

83Toyota88

iTrader: (1)

What exactly do you mean? Does it act funny in cold weather or something?

83

Mine works in all weather...down to -20F is what it's been tested to so far...

KryptoRoxx

Mine will hesitate and not read well at all in sub 30 degree weather till the engine warms up. It gets stuck. After its warm though no issues at all.

83

Interesting! Probably something that the people who know more about electronics could easily address.

83Toyota88

iTrader: (1)

I studied electronics a little in college. If I had to guess I would say its more of a voltage issue due to colder weather. As we all know extreme heat and cold can effect a battery which in turn can effect the voltage in it. But I think the difference is that maybe the colder weather maybe be causing less resistance in wire (if you don't know what I mean google about superconductors and sub-cooling them) and that plays together with the voltage drop in the battery so I think it may take the voltage regulator a few seconds to adjust to account for the differences. Depending on the tach you have it could be sensitive to voltage and maybe actually block any voltage above/below 11-14V till the system regulates the voltage properly.

This could completely left field but thats my guess.

83Toyota88

iTrader: (1)

Good information to know I appreciate the write up on that and the one you have one on the sr5 volt/oil guage install . Been looking at the parts on ebay to do this.

Little Elger

Thanks a lot guys, I just about talked myself out of this swap, but you make it not sound to bad. I'll post back how it works when I getting installed. But that will be after I paint the truck, hopefully tomorrow on the paint.

Little Elger

This post is a little old but I learned something yesterday, the volt meter and oil gauge for the sr5 has its own little harness that has two plugs, then it goes up into one plug, on my 82 the plug it goes into was above and between the heater and the a/c box right at the top underside of the dash all I had to do was plug it in and the gauges worked! I also took the short harness that goes to the pressure sender, pressure switch, and starter, and I think one other connection, all on the passenger side of the engine, off the donor truck and swapped it with that harness on my truck, all it took was unplug and plug in, no splicing at all. I haven't got to the dash cluster yet but it's not going to be so simple, the pins are in different spots on the two trucks.