Digital Dash Swap?

[locovaca]

Did anyone ever test out the Oil Sender? I bought myself a new Ranger, couldn't find any Taurus Digital Clusters but did find a 90 Cougar so I'm going to undertake this project... again. The cluster I got only had 89k on it! Which is great, because my new 93 only has 129k.

I'll probably have to take a trip back to the yard to see if the car had a 20 ohm resistor by the pressure sender. I have the board out and am probing it, there are two "big" resistors on it, a 247 ohm that connects to the oil pressure sender and a 450 ohm that connects to the coolant temp sender. Haven't found any 20 ohm resistors yet, but I don't know if there are any other spots for one to be hiding.

I'm not extremely confident that a real sender would work, though. It looks like you get 12V on one side of the 247 ohm resistor (which makes sense); on the other side one side branches out to the sender pin and the other goes through a 1k resistor into a transistor; the output of that transistor goes into the CPU. While Electronics wasn't my best class in college that suggest to me that it's an on/off deal, if it wasn't then it wouldn't be an input into a transistor.

I'll probably do some more bench tests with some resistors and see what happens, but not too hopeful. I probably won't finish my cluster for several months, doing a frame off restoration of the new truck so that'll take up a lot of my time.

 

[arco777]

Let us know what you find out. I have been too busy with my Thunderbird to give the X much time. Oil pressure gauge is certainly the same dummy gauge as the stock Explorer unit so the wiring and conversion shouldn't be different.

 

[locovaca]

The answer is what I suspected. Unlike the analog gauges, the digital one has no provisions for upgrading to a real oil sender. Tried several resistances, from what I found with a real gauge a net of 70 ohms would peg the pressure in the red zone, and everything came up middle of the road.

One other thing I found, don't know if it was mentioned at all on this thread, the coolant sender is going to be different than the stock one. You have to use the same sender used for the computer, which has a two wire connector on it. You ground one of the wires (doesn't matter which one), then attach the other to the original line. I tried using a standard sender and the cluster "rejected" the signal. The standard sender works at resistances in the 100-300 ohm range, while the computer sender is in the 100k ohm range if memory serves correct.

 

[geoph1986]

I haven't been on in a while. Between work, a little boy that needs constant care, and just every day life, I haven't had a whole lot of time. Here's what's going on.

I did have the cluster installed and working. I was using ccfl's for the back ligthting, but I found that they weren't the best choice to use for a vehicle that goes off road. On the first really hard "hit" the cluster went black...so I have to rethink the lighting thing. I can't remember whose idea it was, but I think the best way to achieve good even lighting would be to use L.E.D. strips. So I'm back to my analog gauges for now.

The oil gauge will always be a "dummy light" with this set up. The only way to get a proper pressure reading is to install another gauge for the oil. Yes you also have to use the 2 wire temp sender. Adding the wires to the pcm was very easy. I went to the u-pull and grabbed a dozen or so runs of wire from a donor vehicles pcm harness. To the best of my knowledge, the speedometer was accurate, at least according to my gps, which is close enough for me.

I did get impatient, so I never did do the "blue tint mod", but I think that the cluster looks more factory in the ugly green, just like all the rest of the lighting in the X.

I've been trying to do a "how to" write up for this install, but I never did realize how much time it takes to put one together, and for the reasons I listed above, I haven't finished it yet. I was trying to get all my pics in order, so the links ended up being broken. I will restore them a.s.a.p.

FOR ALL OF YOU OUT THERE THAT HAVE GIVEN DETAILED "HOW TO'S" WITH PICTURES, MY HAT GOES OFF TO YOU. THANK YOU FOR ALL THE INFORMATION YOU HAVE POSTED THAT MANY, MYSELF INCLUDED, HAVE TAKEN FORE GRANTED.

EDIT:
I'm just adding the pics in order of construction so that people can see what has to happen.

If anyone has questions or any feedback either post or send a pm and I will try to answer as soon as I can. Good luck with this mod, it takes more time and patience than skill.

 

[arco777]

Congratulations man! It looks awesome! Makes me want to tackle mine again. Agreed on the green being better, it looks more factory. Again, "mad props" for a sweet completed project. Hope mine turns out at least half as good!

 

[geoph1986]

Thanks Arco, but without input from you and Nice59, I don't think it would have gone as smoothly. I really liked it when it worked (which was only about a week), but the ccfl's were not up to the demands of an off road environment...was it you that was going to use led panels for the back light? If so, did you ever test them to see how bright they were?

 

[arco777]

No, I was going to use electroluminescent panels. They're available in lots of colors and sizes. I don't know if their power output is sufficient for daytime illumination though.

 

[geoph1986]

Gotcha. So almost back to square one. Back lighting is the major issue with this mod. The circuit board for the LCD displays gets in the way of using traditional bulbs...so I'm open to suggestions...again.

 

[locovaca]

Gotcha. So almost back to square one. Back lighting is the major issue with this mod. The circuit board for the LCD displays gets in the way of using traditional bulbs...so I'm open to suggestions...again.

Why did you abandon the original mounting and bulb lamp in the first place? I planned on keeping the LCDs mounted in the fixture the original cluster used, and getting some replacement xenon bulbs (all of mine were burned out).

 

[arco777]

Personally, I found no way to re-use the stock mounting/bulb strip housing. It was too deep to use the rear lights and too brittle/fragile to modify for mounting only. Those bulbs get seriously hot and they need to be a distance away from the gauge faces anyways for even lighting, and there just isn't enough depth in the Explorer housing for a light projection setup like in the Cougar.

 

[locovaca]

Personally, I found no way to re-use the stock mounting/bulb strip housing. It was too deep to use the rear lights and too brittle/fragile to modify for mounting only. Those bulbs get seriously hot and they need to be a distance away from the gauge faces anyways for even lighting, and there just isn't enough depth in the Explorer housing for a light projection setup like in the Cougar.

I was planning on cutting out the entire back panel of the Expo housing and letting the Bulb strip hang out there. There's plenty of room for the heat to dissipate in the space behind the cluster, IMHO. That said, I may still go LCDs, not sure yet, but I plan on trying that out.

 

[geoph1986]

I was planning on cutting out the entire back panel of the Expo housing and letting the Bulb strip hang out there. There's plenty of room for the heat to dissipate in the space behind the cluster, IMHO. That said, I may still go LCDs, not sure yet, but I plan on trying that out.

If you cut out the entire rear of the X's cluster, you will no longer be able to use the factory connectors. Plus, where would you mount the "brain board"? I did mine the way I did so I could easily switch back to analog gauges...which I did have to do. In also went through 3 cluster housings before I found a design that worked.

Back to the lighting. If you look at the pics you will see that the circuit board for the LCD displays is folded over to fit in the X's housing. The space left between the is only about 5/8", so there is no room for the cougar's light bar. I even tried using a bunch of L.E.D.'s on the light bar, but the lighting wasn't even. There were hot spots for each L.E.D. because there isn't enough space for them to flood out.

 

[MrQ]

How about LED's with a diffuser?

http://www.inirgee.com/catalog/accessories___supplies_514426_products.htm

http://www.imaginarycolours.com/Mer...ode=LPI080&Category_Code=ACC&Product_Count=19

 

[locovaca]

If you cut out the entire rear of the X's cluster, you will no longer be able to use the factory connectors. Plus, where would you mount the "brain board"? I did mine the way I did so I could easily switch back to analog gauges...which I did have to do. In also went through 3 cluster housings before I found a design that worked.

So, when I did my Taurus cluster I went through the effort of keeping the back of the Expo cluster so I could use the stock connectors. I found that it was a lot more hassle than it was worth, because I haven't swapped back and don't have any thoughts of doing it

That said, in my Ranger I'm swapping in Power Windows, which means swapping in an entire new wire harness under the dash, which I have just sitting in my garage. So I'm going to just run an entire new set of wiring up anyway, and the extra hour it takes to splice in new wires (plus soldering) is going to be way easier. Plus, I'm not going to reuse the flexible circuit board, so that eliminates any advantage of keeping the stock connector. On my Taurus cluster I relocated the Parking Brake and High Beam lights to where the two 4x4 lights are because I have a 4x2 truck. Soldering on the plastic circuit board was dodgy, to put it nicely.

What LED bulbs did you try? You definitely can't use any that have any forward facing LEDs.

 

[geoph1986]

I'm not going to reuse the flexible circuit board...Soldering on the plastic circuit board was dodgy, to put it nicely.

I made all my connections to the flexi-circuit, right where the plugs go. The wires were bundled together and heat-shrinked. It seemed decent enough, you just have to watch your heat when soldering to it.

What LED bulbs did you try? You definitely can't use any that have any forward facing LEDs.

I used forward led's on the the light bar, which just plain sucked. Then I tried the same type of bulbs all around the screens, and it was better, but there were still hot spots. That's why I used ccfl's. They offered bright, even light all along. In the picture posted above, there is only one ccfl bulb for lighting, the final design used two. I've got to take a look at different leds...like the ones you posted about early on in this thread.

 

[jaschlum]

great work!

 

[NICE59FORDF100]

Holy crap I wondered why I stopped getting email alerts on this thread! Sorry for my absense! I too got sidelined and by far the most behind on this project. But heres BTT for anyone else who wishes to carry on this crazy project, LOL

 

[arco777]

It sure has been a while... my project materials are off in a closet somewhere. That darn lighting issue was what stopped me as I recall. Now I have money but not the time, and two other cars to fix stuff on.

 

[NICE59FORDF100]

arco did you ever get those EL strips?

 

[arco777]

No, but now that I think about it they might not be bright enough. The light would be even but I'm not sure that in daylight it would be ideal.