Join Our Ford Truck Forum Today

Document your Ford truck project here and inspire others! Login/Register to view the site with fewer ads.

RPM gauge cluster wiring?

Is there any possibility that Ford ran wires for an rpm gauge without it being in the stock cluster? Curious if I can swap out my EFI 88 F250 C6 460 cluster for one that includes the RPM gauge at the junk yard.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
 

fatherdoug

Tonto Papadapolous
I'm guessing the only wiring would have gone through the cluster, since that is where the stock tach was put. If you have a cluster without a tach, it is possible the wiring is there, just terminated.
 

Kaajot

Micro Machine Manager
I wanted to put an tach in too, but decided it wasn't worth it.

It's possible the wiring harness has the wires, just terminated, but it might be worth it to try to find wiring diagrams for both versions of a year that's compatible with yours. The biggest wiring difference that I've dealt with personally was when my E40D transmission blew up 3 years, brought me here, and the mechanic installed an AOD telling me it "would be ok." Very wrong, and of course there was a wire plug never connected for the E40D. I've never gone under an AOD tranny and looked for the wires or where they should be and tried to find a "snipped" eunuch mark that it's the same wiring harness.

I kind of think it will be different, but a tach is a little less abnormal.

The best bet would be to follow the wiring diagram for one with a tach, look where the wire goes on the engine, then see if that wire exists on your engine and figure out where it goes. You may find the "snipped" wire's termination point or be able to create a junction on the wire that would normally give a tach its information and bring it to the tach as a connection.

What I'd do is just do that with the new tach or cluster you want to install externally before you go tearing apart/disconnecting everything else. You could see if the tach responds to your handiwork, providing the signal also carries power. You may need to run a power lead (5v typically is what I found, although it could be 12v) of a 5v line and plug it into your tach cluster too.
 

Ford Truck Articles

Top