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Replacing Gage cluster


Lancenone
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My 1991 Grand Prix LE came with the basic dash. (Speed, temp, and gas). Does anyone know if I will run into any problems if I attempt to replace that with the enhanced dash that was an option?

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i am 99% sure you can do that. Send me 10 bucks for shipping, 10 bucks for the guages and youve got one. The face plastic is really really scratched so youll have to unscrew the face from ur old one then put it on this one. I will check tomorrow morning if the pinouts are the same in my old dead 91 GP LE which is sitting at the local gas station rotting away with mine if you like to be sure.....or if anyone is 100% just tell me...im almost positive it will though

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Hey lance, nice to see you on the forum's finally! lol

Does anyone have a GM Grand Prix Service manual? Those should have all the schematics in them for the pinouts of the cluster harness.

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I am not sure if the base clusters had the Pin D7 TACH wire (white) already on the car sideconnector... If it does then the tach will work on the rally pak Gaugas... If not, you'll have to run the wire yourself from the DIS Module.

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The good news is that I temporarly swaped the cluster out and the tach and everything else worked fine. But I do have a couple problems still.

 

One. The oil pressure gages stays maxed out, what do I need to do to make that guage work?

 

Two. This one was an obvious oversight on my part. When I bought the replacement cluster I neglected to look/ask if it was from a Grand Prix with the shifter on the steering column. The guage cluster I got came from a veichle with a floor mount shifter, where as mine is on the steering column. Therefore, the new gage cluster doesn't have anything on it to show what I'm in. It looks like I can cut a hole in the new gage cluster face and put in the transmission indicator (or whatever) from my old gauge cluster in the new gauge cluster. Does anyone think there would be any problems in doing this? I didn't have time to look at it very closely?

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You can do it, but just take you time and measure your cuts perfectly, or it will look sloppy. The one thing ur gunna have to be carful with is not to play with that indicator too much. Back in the blizzard of 96 here my dad decided it'd be a good idea to take the car out. well after about 15 forward and reverse shifts he finally made it out of the driveway, and broke that piece of shit. that thing it so fucking flimbsy. My mom then just let it sit in OD for the next trillion years till i got the car and decided to fix it. I spent 4 hours trying to make that thing work and it did for about 2 days then got stuck again. GM wanted some rediculous price for one, i think like 80 bucks. I finally said fuck it and i drenched the entire cable and inside of that thing with wd-40 and let it dry. i didnt care if it lit up at night, i needed it to work because the column shift is very hard to pinpoint what gear ur in. just be careful with that lil devil. as for the oil pressure im not sure why thats staying maxed. hopefully someone here might be able to figure that one out. if theres no reason for it to not work, try taking the face plastic off and pushing it down while its on, maybe its just being gay, cuz it worked fine when i had it. hope this helps

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The oil guage stays maxed out because it's getting a constant voltage. Since your old cluster just had a dummy light, there's a resistor on the wiring coming from the oil pressure sender which keeps a certain voltage. I think I explained this to you the other day.. but I remember when I tried to put the oil guage in my lumina, it did the same thing. According the the schematics of the oil pressure sender, there was a resistor in the line.. which is what caused the constant voltage. The only way to fix it... would be to run a whole new wire from the pressure sender.

 

As for the shift indicator.. the cluster in my lumina had a cutout already there for the column shift indicators.. all you had to do was remove 2 screws and a plactic panel. install all the needed stuff, and you were set. I don't know about the GP clusters, but from the way it sounds it's completely different from the lumina.

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For the GP there is no cutout, but there is a space right behind it that it fits into. If the oil pressure guage doesnt work because it previousl had a dummy light, why does the voltmeter work correctly? That was also a dummy light on the base cluster. come to think of it, that light never lit up on my car, as did the oil light. only when it was set to ON, but they remained on. Well to me that is the least important guage on there anyway. the volts and tach are the ones i find really useful.

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I have a 93 lumina with the base cluster and i just recently purchased the cluster from a z34 off of ebay. What kind of things should i be worried about/look for when swapping them out? Will it just be a direct plug in or would it require rewiring? TIA.

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Are you sure he doesn't just have to replace the pressure sensor with a variable voltage one? I don't have my book here with me right now but my Regal shows that the base cluster uses one that sends just two voltages, one hi, one low....light on light off.

 

The premium cluster shows a variable voltage sending unit sensor.

 

The resistor thing is new to me. Not saying it isn't so...just new.

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The resistor thing is new to me too.

The Grand Prix is similar to the Cutlass Supreme in that the only difference is instead of a pressure switch, it has a pressure sender. So all you have to do is replace the pressure switch with a sender. The one for oil is right next to the oil filter.

 

I don't know about the Grand Prix, but Cutlass owners need to change the coolant temperature switch to a sender as well.

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Maybe you thought the oil pressure sensor was a resistor?

 

In a schematic, the oil pressure sensor would be drawn as a resistor because that's pretty much what it is - a pressure sensitive variable resistor.

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i was wondering if i could do the same thing with my lumina(90 euro) i hate only being able to see the speed up to 85 and fuel. plus the fact that my fuel gauge goes about a quarter tank more than fuel on a fillup. are there any special parts/sensors needed? :werd:

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