Installation of factory tach and center fuel gauge in 69

[wtexz10]

A friend of mine gave me an original tach for a 69.  My car has the standard speedo and fuel gauge, no console.  I would like to install this tach and replace my fuel gauge with a center fuel gauge. 

Will the tach plug into the wireing harness behind the dash or will I need to rewire.  If I do have to rewire what is involved?

Will the Center fuel gauge plug into the original fuel gauge harness? 

Thanks in advance.
Kris

[wtexz10]

Any one want to take a stab at this?

Kris

[DeanZ10]

Your existing harness will not have the correct wires for your tach. You can buy an aftermarket harness from any supplier that will make it work. In addition, the tach will not just fit into your housing. The housings that had factory tachs had the back cut out to allow the tach to extend out past the housing, whereas the fuel gauge sat right in and was bolted from the back. I am not sure if the fuel gauge wiring would work...seems like it should.
Hope this is of some assistance.
Dean

[wtexz10]

Dean,

Thanks for the response.  I'm still debating with myself to make this change.  But this helps.

Kris

[olympic69]

You should be able to see an outline of the Tach cutout on the back of the cluster, you may have to look at different angles to see it- not real obvious.Since the Tach was available without the full gauge package, the wiring is addressed as an add-on in the assembly manual. See RPO U16

So if you want it- do it!

[rich69rs]

I did this about 10 years ago and it is not all that difficult.  After removing my dash mounted fuel gage, the opening had to be enlarged in order to accomodate a tach.  This was easily accomplished, with care, with a hole saw.  Before modifying the cluster in my car, I had picked up a damaged one from a junk yard that had several Camaros in it.  I practiced the cut, tach fit, etc on the damage cluster before cutting on the one in my car.  I mainly wanted to verify the fit of the tack in the dash panel after the enlarging the opening.  All went well.

My car came with a console.  As a part of the effort, was the installation of console gages.  The gage kit came with an extension harness to wire the gages into the existing console harness.  The wire from to the fuel gage had to be re routed from the dash to the console - no problem - all went well.  The oil pressure connection is pvc tubing fromt he back of the block, throught the firewall directly to the gage.  Temp gage wiring was already there.  Simply re-routed it from the idiot light in the dash  down to the console and replaced the sending unit from the on/off type for the idiot light to the proper sending unit for the gage.

So far, so good - The ammeter gage in the console required new wiring to be routed into the car and properly terminated in the engine compartment.  For the tach, a seperate lead was run through the firewall to the coil.  Some spaghetti, but not too bad, and all worked well.

Where it really got good was from 2004 to mid 2005 when I completely disassembled the front of the car back to the firewall.  I replaced both engine compartment wiring harnesses.  The replacement engine harness was purchased for a car with console gages.  This harness has the tach, ammeter, temp gage wiring as an integral part of the harness - which completely cleaned up the engine compartment.  Under the dash, instead having to run the ammeter and tach wiring through the dash, they simply terminate at the proper locations on the dash side of the fuse block.  Engine wiring harnes plugs into the engine side of the fuse block and all is as GM originally designed it.

Good luck on the update - take your time - no big deal.