will a guage cluster from a truck with a tach work in one without one? does it have the wires for it?

 

I believe you need a diffrent dash wiring harness. Dont quote me on that but Id wager it 51/49 that you do.

 

i'm going to guess the other way, and say it might work. this is based on a guess that dodge would standardize on a single wiring harness at the factory, and then slip in 2 versions of the cluster. i swapped mine because the speedo quit working, and the cluster just plugs into a big electrical socket in the dash, with no individual connectors. clusters can be found pretty cheap. i bought one on ebay for $25. from what i saw, they claim to fit multiple years, but i don't know that for sure. i went with the same year just to be sure.

be aware that the odometer mileage is stored in the cluster, and cannot be changed.

 

Yes it will work. I just installed mine yesterday. I have a 96 Ram 1500 that hadthe gauges without a tach and acracked plastic cluster cover. I priced a new plastic cover at 100.00 so I started checking e-bay. I got a complete cluster assembly with tach for about 35.00. It was from a standard truck and mine is automatic. I took the mechanical speedometer out of my original and bolted it on the replacement one so my miles would be the same. I also unboltedmy oldgear selector insert in the middle of the cluster and put that in. The manualone just bolts a filler spacer in the same place. The two connectors plug in the back exactly like the original. Didn't take too long at all and everything worked perfectly. Good Luck

 

thanks for the information

 

What year is your truck?

I looked into this for my truck, and found that it is very much possible. The wiring for the tach is already present on the plug that connects to the gauge cluster, just need the cluster that has the tach in it. Only problem I found with it is that the odometer chip on the cluster stores the odometer reading. The PCM increments it. So swapping clusters will give you the odometer reading of the new cluster. This is considered odometer tampering, and is a federal offense if you try to sell the truck and don't disclose that you did that. I've wanted to pull my cluster out and see if it would be possible to remove the odometer and odometer chip to install into the new cluster to maintain the original odometer reading, but never got around to checking it out. This is a mod I plan to do someday though.

I contacted my local dealer about this, and they said that if, for example, you had a gauge cluster that failed, they would order a new one, and it would be shipped with the correct number of miles already incremented on the new odometer. That's how they get around it.