well, only now i find out i am going to have to hook up some cables from the Gauges to power, so all i woud have to do is hook them up to my factory fog light switch? what say i didnt connect it? would only the numbers show up then instead of the bright white background? its a 91 Surf, so a 4runner

 

I would imagine that you will have to hook up power regardless to operate the gauges although the power section for lighting may be separate and if it were me I would piggy back the circuit for dash lighting so you could use the dimmer to control output , the power for the main I would use the same feed that is controlled by your ignition circuit for your original cluster .
Others may have some actual swap experience and be able to help more specifically but that would be your best way so it will operate on a OEM level

 

ya, im aware that yo do have to hook u power no matter what, but then i have to hve a way to tun them on, so i want them to turn on when the old ones did. so i read my FSM and it seems to be the white wire with black stripe. i just want to clarafy that so i dont have to cut every wire till i find the one that turns on the gauges normally.

 

 

just get a test light and splice it in with the parking lights wire that way they turn on with them and stay on with the head lights if you wanna get cool about it just hook them up the the parking throw a switch inline and you can turn them on with the headlights and turn them off so just the niddles glow if your just puting a gage face on your stock cluster right i did this to my neon looked really cool lol

 

it looks like i might have to test them, cause no one seems to know which wire is the right one.

 

I think I just tapped into my parking lights fuse. Works great!

 

Cool

 

well, it is MUCH easier to just hook them up to the cigarette lighter! i hooked mine up and it works very nicely. check out page 2 on my cardomain account

 

is it possible to hook them up so the dimmer works?

 

yea, it works for me, i just hooked it up to the cigarette lighter, and anyway, they come with a dimmer switch

 

my gage doesn't tho. i didn't think the cig lighter was wired thru the dimmer. maybe it is.

 

it is, thats wierd that it did not come with it, maybe they changed it now, but ya, thelight, that lights the cigarette lighter, you hook into that. for me i just pushed the red and black wire into the same slot that the power goes into at the end of the wires, that go to the bulb, so i did not have to cut anything. hope that helps

 

i'll check into it. the gage i was referring to was my oil pressure gage

 

ooohhhhhhh,ell id ont know about that, do you have indiglo gauges? and if so, its your oil pressure not lighting? if so then i would say that the wire that comes off of it is bent, so you need to take your cluster out again and make sure the wires are not bent or crushed.

 

no, it is just a stand alone mechanical oil pressure. i was trying to figure how to get the light thru the dimmer.

 

oh ok, i get it now, ok, yes, it SHOULD be cause it limits the amount of power going to the gauges, so if it says to hook it up to the lights, then you can save your self a load of hours trying to find the right wire and hook it up to the cigarette lighter, just find one that provides power to the bulb that is in the cig lighter, i htink it is the green wire, mine was, yours might be different. but it will work for sure.