I am thinking about swapping my 65 "sweeper" style gauges for a 65 Gt or 66 circular gauge set up. Has anyone done this? Is the wiring different? Thanks for your help!
I am thinking about swapping my 65 "sweeper" style gauges for a 65 Gt or 66 circular gauge set up. Has anyone done this? Is the wiring different? Thanks for your help!
You would have to get an underdash wiring harness to match the swapped in gauge cluster. Pull the harness out of whatever donor car you get the clusrer out of, be sure to check condition of wiring/insulation. Or buy a new repro harness, but they can be pricey, but cheaper than a fire caused by faulty wiring. Also look into a JME or Haneline aftermarket cluster, both come with new wiring, and you can add a tach.
As Randy said, the underdash harness is different for the gauge style, but the underhood feed is also different.
The repro underdash harness runs about $400 last time I looked, and the gauge feed is another $30-$40. Painless's new replacement harness replaces everything in the car, and runs about $465.
That said, I pulled a '66 gauge style harness out of a junkyard and cleaned & retaped it for my gauge setup. I went to a 6 hole R style with Autometer gauges. All I bought was the underdash harness to match the '66 harness.
I had seen the Shelby R style in a parts catalog, couldn't really tell how well it fit or how clean the installation would be. Doyou have any pics of the finished product you could post? It's a lot cheaper than the JME, that's for sure.
I didn't end up with the r-style part showing, the Autometer gauges seemed 1/2"-3/4" too deep to fit with it, so I cut and drilled an oak panel to fit and stained it, so it looks ok, but could be better. Unfortunately I don't have any better pics. After laying with the r panel, I think for a clean install it would take some trimming of the dash opening on the back side for it to fit, unless I was doing it wrong.
But this is what it ended up looking like. I used some 12V lights that snapped into the panel for turn and bright indicators.