LS1TECH - Camaro and Firebird Forum Discussion - Wiring, Stereo & Electronics

I'm thinking of building a fully digital LCD Gauge Cluster for 98 - 02 FBody's

Need4Camaro — Thu, 21 May 2026 05:58:34 GMT

This is still preliminary / conceptual.

I miss Derek's work here. I have one of his clusters and it's for the most part still working great but the LED lights are flickering. I haven't reverse engineered his cluster but I have been thinking of building a fully LCD display for 98 - 02 F-Body's. Of course, I wouldn't be taking on this endeavor alone. I would likely team up with other vendors who can 3D Print the housing, create necessary circuit boards, and supply the LCD's.

I'm aware of the limitations of LCD's. LCD's generally come in square, circular, or rectangular form. Curved LCD's are expensive but I have not yet fully priced out the cost to have one carved to the dimensions of an F-Body gauge cluster. I'm still in process of doing this but I'm expecting it to be north of the $10k mark. If that is the case then I have to see if mass producing them will significantly reduce the costs. If it does then it may still be worth it if a kit can be mass produced and sold. I 'may' get lucky and find some one cable and willing to do it for less, but this is not the only route I am considering...

One of the blessings is that the Gauge Cluster Cavity in the Lower Dash area is very forgiving, wide and open with the exception of

My expectation is that the LCD's would come rectangular. I've attached a 'general layout' of some LCD designs. I'm aware that they extend beyond the stock cluster's physical dimensions, however; I suspect that there is enough play in the cavity of the dashboard to oversize alittle bit. Be mindful that if this ever does go into production, these will not be modifications of the existing clusters but rather 3D printed housings with the LCD's, custom designed circuit board for 'mostly' plug and play operability with what I suspect would be some feeding from OBD as well. I would 'like' to be able to design a kit to be able to gather OBD related information directly from the PCM rather than the OBD port to keep the OBD port free and available to use without sacrificing dash functions but we'll see what ends up coming of what.

I've been talking to some vendors lately to see what we can some up with...

The oversized LCD's of course, would be housed inside the cluster housing as well as hidden behind the bezel. A few general designs below [noting that the turn signals will have their own LCDs in all designs, in two of them I forgot to include that]:

BCM Hatch release only 5-6V - help

Vetal — Mon, 18 May 2026 15:38:11 GMT

Edit: currently the problem investigated as such:
I have only 4V on the BCM wire when it�s commanding relay to close with engine not running. When the engine is running, there is 1V at this pin at rest, but when I press dash button, it sends 5-6V to the relay. Sometimes it is enough to click the relay.
Why is BCM not sending 12V?

Original: Long story short, my 1999' Firebird trunk release went crazy. First it stopped opening both from dash button and key fob. Now that I started investigating, I came to the point when it started opening trunk BUT ONLY when the engine is running and transmission is in Park or Neutral.
Now even more weird, today first it worked without pressing break pedal. Now it only works while I am pressing brake pedal (and of course engine is running and transmission in Park or Neutral).
What the hell? :)

These Pontiac power & volume knobs are such junk!

k3000 — Wed, 13 May 2026 20:30:53 GMT

I took a close look at one today, the grey exterior is bonded to the interior part.

The interior part that pushes on to the metal volume shaft is that brittle clear plastic GM loves to use on things.

And, the **** is of course long since discontinued!

I might try filling the hollow parts of the **** with epoxy to reinforce the **** better.

Monsoon Radio 1998-2002 Firebird

k3000 — Thu, 07 May 2026 17:15:37 GMT

Does anyone know how this radio is different than the Monsoon radio? This radio does not say Monsoon on it and is not the right radio for a 1998-2002 Firebird.

https://www.1factoryradio.com/collec...music-09390772

These are some of the known Firebird Monsoon radio part numbers:

16257152, 09380122, 09350812, 09390782, 09375292, 09370202

Is it still possible to buy a Clock Spring w/Radio Controls for a 99 - 02 FBody?

Need4Camaro — Mon, 04 May 2026 05:35:10 GMT

I sourced the part number to be 26069709 -- but they are extremely difficult to find.

I was wondering if anyone knew a source.

sound system wiring help

WS6rodriguez — Sun, 03 May 2026 19:19:00 GMT

alright so today i tried to finally take a look at the wiring with my stereo and sound system bc ive had the car for 2 years and never touched any of it and now that i look at it im even more confused.. it looks like the car used to have a some type of sound system with a amp but stripped it when he sold it to me because he left some shittu door speakers on it and i found thati got a power wire with a 50 amp fuse in it and a ground wire aswell, the guy took out the original amp aswell as the one he put after now there�s a bunch of wires leading to the stereo and half are js cut off aswell, can someone with some knowledge please tell me whats going on and point me in the right direction?😭

🙏🏽

1999 Camaro LS1 Wont start with 12v on the battery

juds99 — Sun, 03 May 2026 00:35:39 GMT

I just recently I picked up a 1999 Camaro Z28 LS1 w/ a T56. I took it for a test drive before I purchased it and went over some pretty serious bumps and there was no issues. with that being said, on my two hour drive back home I was on a bumpy part of the highway when absolutely everything in the car went off, Gauges, Lights, Engine, absolutely everything, but it was only for a split second. if it was daytime, the only way you would have known the car went off would be because the entire dash reset. the car came back to life and all was well for about thirty minutes until it shut off again, but this time it didn't come back on. I pulled off to the side of the highway, turned the ignition off, then turned the car right back on like nothing ever happened. I made it home and didn't worry about the problem as I did not have time to work on it then. Fast forward to today, I just got the car registered and had to take care of the oil as it was time for a change. while I was filling the oil I poked at a few grounds in the engine bay and wiggled a few wires while the car as running to see if it would die again, but I came up on nothing. I drove it twenty minutes to town, and twenty minutes back with absolutely No problems. I parked it for about four hours then came back out to show one of my buddies the car, went to start it, and there was nothing. the car clicked then had absolutely no juice. Not even any lights on the dash. I took a voltmeter to the battery and there is a healthy 12.5 Volts. I have to do a thorough check of all of the grounds and the alternator still, but I am wondering if anybody else has had a problem similar to this before. anything would help me. Thank you!

- one thing that I should mention is that I bought an adaptor that plugs into the 12v port which doubles the ports. plugged into it I have a laser scanner and an FM transmitter. I noticed that when I turned the car off the scanner and the transmitter were still on, so i unplugged the transmitter and turned off the scanner. Initially I thought that is what did it, but it wouldn't make sense for those two little things to kill my battery (which they clearly didn't) in that short of a time. any information helps.