Conversions & Hybrids - Anybody ever wired up a 2000 Trans Am Dash Cluster in their swap?!?! Help Please!

Hey guys, I'm trying to use a Dash Cluster out of the donor car that I got the LS1/T56 from but I'm having issues getting the gauges that are on the serial data bus to work. The dash cluster is out of the exact car that the motor and transmission came out of.

We have the oil pressure and the voltage gauges working and the speedo might be working as well since we do have the VSS wire hooked up, just haven't had a chance to jack up the car while it's running to see if it works or not.

Anyway, we have all the wires hooked up that we are aware of from the GM service manual. We have the constant 12v, switched 12v, the grounds, inst. cluster power, oil pressure, VSS wire, MIL light wire, and the serial data wires all hooked up. I have tested the serial data wire out since it's the same wire the OBDII plus uses and I'm able to get a connection to the computer and read the RPM and all the other data directly from the computer.

The issues, the odometer doesn't light or nor does it work. The temp gauge, tach and most likely the fuel gauge (don't have a sender hooked up to the fuel gage but it's one of the gages that gets it's info from the serial data from what I can see). The gages all do a sweep when you first give them power so the gauges seem to be working, just seems like the dash isn't being told to turn or or something of that nature. There is no ABS, Air Bag, or anything else connected to the serial data bus right now and I'm wondering if maybe that's part of the problem.

Anybody got any ideas as to what my problem may be? Thanks!

TTT, anybody got any ideas?

Thanks!

"powershiftkung" has a camaro dash in his mustang, what year is the dropout from?

"powershiftkung" has a camaro dash in his mustang, what year is the dropout from?

Thanks for the heads up.

Oops, sorry, forgot the year, my bad. It's all from a 2000 Trans Am.

Unless you are using the t/a sending unit integrated into the oem fuel sender unit on your conversion the gas gauge will not work. The tach, oil pressure, and speedometer are hardwired outputs. The rest of the gauges are off of the serial data from the pcm. It sounds like the cluster may be lacking an ign source since the odometer is not lighting up.

Unless you are using the t/a sending unit integrated into the oem fuel sender unit on your conversion the gas gauge will not work. The tach, oil pressure, and speedometer are hardwired outputs. The rest of the gauges are off of the serial data from the pcm. It sounds like the cluster may be lacking an ign source since the odometer is not lighting up.

In 2000 on a T/A cluster the fuel gauge, tach, and temp are all serial data feed. The oil pressure and voltage get their signal from a wire and the speedo and odometer get their signal from the VSS wire but they go through a solid state logic chip to process out the odometer and the speedo from what I understood from looking at the diagrams. That solid state logic chip I think also has the serial data bus II going into it as well and it processes out that data.

It's funny you mention the ign source for that was actually our issue, well sort of, but in a way that made it so it wouldn't work. My brother just figured out the problem. There is a wired labled 'fused ign source' and we figured that meant it should get feed fused ign. all of the time. Well, in reading more into it my brother figured out that was only suppose to get power when the starter was cranking over. After he wired it up were that only got power when the starting was cranking over the cluster works just fine now.

So, in the end, as we both joked about the whole time, it literally was just one wire that caused it not to work! I'm so excited for now I can see what's going on and not have to buy and fab up a bunch of gauges!