I have a 1998 2500 base model that has the speedo, water temp, oil pressure, volts, and fuel gauge where the tach should be. My question is can I swap in a cluster with full gauges (with tach) in its place? I am sure the cluster would fit by will the wiring hook up or is it a completely different harness? I know other makes you have the swap out the cab harness and that is more work than I want to take on to have a factory tach.

Jeff

 

Do a search this has been thrown around for a while and I'm pretty sure a lot of people have done this.

 

Yes you can do it, but know there are some legal issue with it, mainly if you plan to ever resell your truck down the road. Your odometer reading is stored on the cluster (the PCM only increments it). So by swapping the cluster, you alter the odometer reading of your truck (unless you happen to find one that has the same miles as the cluster in your truck). Altering the odometer is fraud and also a federal offense, plus subject to various state and local laws. If you never sell the truck, no one cares. If you do sell it though, you have to report the odometer discrepency. There is a form you have to file with the DMV, and it has to be disclosed at the time of the sale.

I know because I tried to do this on my truck. I even bought a cluster on eBay and installed it in my truck. The tach worked, but I was getting NO BUS on the odometer, so something else wasn't working. It probably came out of the wrong year truck or something. But I decided I didn't want the paperwork headache, and just installed an aftermarket tach instead.

 

ive done it and had no problems, except the high-beam light would stay on if the light switch was off. my solution was to remove the twist-lock bulb from the cluster.

the bottom one was my factory cluster, the top one came out of a 2000 durango.

the only difference is instead of saying 4x4 now it say part-time 4wd



while i was in there i painted the black plastic surround white.

 

Hi, sorry to bump this, I recently got a 1995 ram and was trying to switch out the cluster. I got one from a 1995 with a tach, hooked it up with the two connectors that were used on the non tach cluster. Everything works but not the tach, are there more wires that I am missing or did i get one with a bad tach.

Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction, i searched the forms and it looked like its just plug and play for the 1995.

Thanks,
Robert

 

There is a 95 service manual available for download around here somewhere..... that would have wiring diagrams for ya.

 

Checked the wiring diagram and I have the wires to run the tach. So I'm guessing that the tach didn't work from the beginning. I will be contacting the salvage yard as they have a 30 day replacement guarantee.

Thanks for the lead,
Robert

 

I did this swap on my 1999 ram and i had the the same high beam problem but i took the bulb out, my current issue is that when i shift up or down (5 speed) the right blinker light will flash and sometimes stay on. Any ideas??

 

What year cluster did you install?

 

Not sure but it was between 98-01 Automatic and now not only does the blinker flash but the reverse lights are on all the time and the brake lights dont work, when i switched back to my stock cluster the high beam light stays on and the reverse lights are still on.