taking apart a 62 dash cluster

[Angrywood]

has anyone taken their dash cluster apart to clean it up? anything surprising jump out when you unscrew it and separate it? here is a pic of mine.... figured id clean it up and paint while i have it out working on a wiring issue.

[60short]

this is for the later trucks, but is very similar from my experience ...

How To Restore and Detail an Original Gauge Cluster

[SkinnyG]

There are wee rectangular rubber insulators - watch for those to fall out. And the bulb surrounds and lenses.

I went Classic Instruments on my '61, which uses the original bezel.

[Angrywood]

thanks 60 and skinny... on mine it doesn't look as complicated with all the gauges and such. seems like a handful of screws to separate the cluster into half so it doesn't seem like i will have to deal with too many little pieces. but will be looking for those rectangular pieces skinny talk about. thnx

[Agv63]

Nothing fancy on them. Unless you are stripping the speedo unit into pieces. I only removed the backing plate and carefully cleaned and relubricate. Did mine about a year ago and added a temp and oil pressure gauge.
Painte mine silver on inside and silver on the lens engraving. Then 2 hrs of elbow grease to polish it up.
Went with yellow led bulbs for lighting. Vdo electric gauges, temp gauge i had was actually for oil temp but i had it, found a place that it works.and no extra monies spend.
Last pic is where i am with center of dash to hide the butchering that so many have experienced. Still a work in progress there,

Cheers.
Adriaan.

[Angrywood]

Originally Posted by Agv63

Nothing fancy on them. Unless you are stripping the speedo unit into pieces. I only removed the backing plate and carefully cleaned and relubricate. Did mine about a year ago and added a temp and oil pressure gauge.
Painte mine silver on inside and silver on the lens engraving. Then 2 hrs of elbow grease to polish it up.
Went with yellow led bulbs for lighting. Vdo electric gauges, temp gauge i had was actually for oil temp but i had it, found a place that it works.and no extra monies spend.
Last pic is where i am with center of dash to hide the butchering that so many have experienced. Still a work in progress there,

Cheers.
Adriaan.

looks clean. no im just taking the baking off to clean the front inside area. nothing crazier than that. if you dont mind and have the chance...can you send a pic of the back of you cluster? does your gen light have a brown and pink wire to it?
thanks

[Agv63]

Originally Posted by Angrywood

looks clean. no im just taking the baking off to clean the front inside area. nothing crazier than that. if you dont mind and have the chance...can you send a pic of the back of you cluster? does your gen light have a brown and pink wire to it?
thanks

Will have a look , the colour coding sounds familiar, i remember pink was switched power when i traced wiring before i redid all of it, cant remember if i used a new bulb holder or joined wires on the old one, too many add-ons over the years and had burnt wires, mine were a mess when i got it. Didnt have the temp lights or the oil press dummy light, half of the display lights were missing.

Cheers.
Adriaan.

[Agv63]

Originally Posted by Angrywood

..can you send a pic of the back of you cluster? does your gen light have a brown and pink wire to it?
thanks

Hi. I checked just now, i changed my bulb holder so cant verify wire colors.
I do have a image of wiring schematics that i used when tracing my wires, it does show on there that pink and brown is for gen light.

Your cluster looks good. Its wonderful what some time spend on cleaning and detailing on things can do.

Cheers.
Adriaan.

[DPowers]

Place it face down on a clean white towel. Remove the screws and take it apart in layers. Plast-X does real well with polishing the lens.

[Angrywood]

wow...what a difference a little bit of time makes. thanks for the help on taking it apart. ill pant the back panel gray as well like the bezel when i paint the inside of the cab.

[DPowers]

Looks great.

[Angrywood]

Originally Posted by Angrywood

has anyone taken their dash cluster apart to clean it up? anything surprising jump out when you unscrew it and separate it? here is a pic of mine.... figured id clean it up and paint while i have it out working on a wiring issue.

Heres another question... can anyone tell me if this is a stock cluster and if so what year? im trying to find a new harness for it but it appears AAW and other wire harness companies have never heard of a dash cluster that has two gauges and two warning lights. thus dont know what wire harness ill be needing. my cluster has two plugins... one with 4 wires other with 6. 61 and 62 harnesses either had 3 and six or 4 and 5.

[Agv63]

Originally Posted by Angrywood

Heres another question... can anyone tell me if this is a stock cluster and if so what year? im trying to find a new harness for it but it appears AAW and other wire harness companies have never heard of a dash cluster that has two gauges and two warning lights. thus dont know what wire harness ill be needing. my cluster has two plugins... one with 4 wires other with 6. 61 and 62 harnesses either had 3 and six or 4 and 5.

Does your harness look like this one? Weird enough i was looking as dashes to get some ideas and inbetween this popped up. Looking at that layout it looks like what yours would be. On ecklers site it says for 60-61 c20.

[Angrywood]

Originally Posted by Agv63

Does your harness look like this one? Weird enough i was looking as dashes to get some ideas and inbetween this popped up. Looking at that layout it looks like what yours would be. On ecklers site it says for 60-61 c20.

the 3 i looked at looked like that. only difference was the harness plugs. hard to tell with the wire coloring from that picture and what i got on the dash.

[Angrywood]

Originally Posted by Agv63

Does your harness look like this one? Weird enough i was looking as dashes to get some ideas and inbetween this popped up. Looking at that layout it looks like what yours would be. On ecklers site it says for 60-61 c20.

it looks right but hard to tell how many tabs are in each plug.

[Agv63]

Unfortunately thats the only image ecklers shows on their website, zooming doesnt help much . And the ship it directly from a supplier so they wont have one to view directly. I think it is from american auto wire.

[DPowers]

You have an idiot light cluster. Full instrument cluster looks like this (with optional tach).
Contact M&H
wiringharness.com

[Angrywood]

Originally Posted by DPowers

You have an idiot light cluster. Full instrument cluster looks like this (with optional tach).
Contact M&H
wiringharness.com

even with the temp guage it would consider it the idiot light cluster? and get the harness for that and it should work?

[cwcarpenter98]

You can purchase a new harness for a truck with warning lights and it will work with your cluster. The warning lights will have two wires running to the coolant temp warning lights. Since you have a gauge, you can just use one wire from that two wire plug at the warning lights/gauge. That's what I did with my 63 when I swapped clusters to have a temp gauge.

You might have to move the temp wires around on the plug to match up with the correct wire from your temp gauge sender, but a small, flat blade screwdriver can easily pop the terminals out of the plug

[Angrywood]

perfect.. thanks for the info DP and CW