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All I had before was a giant tach that I never look at and a volt gauge. It was all securely zip tied together, but did not have a professionally fabricated appearance. I could have simply added an aftermarket fuel gauge to it, but this will look cleaner. I'm still keeping the aftermarket oil pressure, oil temp, and water temp gauges. I also want to be able to compare temps apples to apples with other drivers who seem to run cooler than I do. The biggest driver here is the fuel gauge as I intend to shift some weight around just a smidge to get more inboard between the front and rear wheels. I'm probably not good enough to notice it, but every little bit helps and I'm doing a number of little bits to it this winter and hoping that, collectively, they do something. It'll be nice to have idiot lights front and center too to do a better job of getting my attention when something goes awry.
An LS Pontiac dash would be perfect, my 3 gauges would fit right into the circular vent holes. Any idea if the Camaro and TA used the same cluster? I have a 98 LS cluster, the 1 year where the coolant temp gauge actually worked because it was sensor driven, not PCM driven.
I'll dig back though my notes and see, last year I swapped a 95 firebird dash into my 95 camaro to get the round vents to mount gauges in. Then took some sheet metal and made my own blank face where the stock cluster would go, much like I did with the camaro the year before. I'll dig up some pics, wasn't hard at all.
Here's a few from building the dash for the Camaro, the firebird ones are on my phone. I never hooked up the speedo, so when I did the next rendition I only used a 5" tach, oil, water, and a narrow band in front of me, in the vents is Fuel, Trans, and Volts, and the F.A.S.T dual wide band is in the glove box.
An LS Pontiac dash would be perfect, my 3 gauges would fit right into the circular vent holes. Any idea if the Camaro and TA used the same cluster? I have a 98 LS cluster, the 1 year where the coolant temp gauge actually worked because it was sensor driven, not PCM driven.
The only difference was font and bulb color, but completely interchangeable.
The vent holes make good gauge mounts but it's getting harder to find an uncracked dash at the yards, getting tough just to find them period these days.
How was that panel secured to the bezel? Mine was zip tied in a million places and it drove me nuts.
On the Camaro one I epoxied tabs onto the back side of the plastic factory bezel and then used some sheet metal screws to attach them to one another (last picture). On the Firebird swap, I made tabs on the panel, bent them over and drilled and riveted the sheet metal to the plastic in 4 spots. You can kind of see the rivets if you look closely on the edges. I thought I had some better pictures of when I was building the fire bird dash but I can find em so these are how it looks today. I scored the firebird dash carrier from the junk yard for like 40 bucks, stripped it of everything I didn't need there. It just a shell in the car, no hvac or air bags etc, it's from like a 96 or 97 so it's a slightly different opening than the LS cars I think. The switches below my radio are for ignition system, fuel pump, electric water pump and fan's high and low. On the firebird cluster the Tach is not a panel mount tach, but I found a fernco type rubber fitting that fit the back of it snugly, cut my hole and slid it in and used the thick rubber to hold it in place, the others have mounting brackets. Some one posted this in another thread https://maggperformance.com/product/...r-blank-plate/
Last edited by biketopia; Feb 22, 2020 at 12:31 PM.
I need to read through this now that I'm in CP. Dumped a lot of stuff off the nose and I can see radiator ducting and a hood vent need to be on the list. I do still have the OEM ducting that isn't in this pic, but it still needs some side sealing.
Biketopia that looks way better than the way my car was put together. I like that.
Taylor you may already be aware but the LT1 radiators are a bit thicker than the LS1 radiators. Not sure if that applies to parts store radiators. Whenever I have to make my next shroud, I'm going to use aluminum sheet instead of this plastic as it deforms with heat. Just sitting in the sun you can watch it warp.
I'm using the LS1 radiator. It did seem to have a harder time keeping up with the extra power and rpm this year so I think I'm about at it's limit. But yes aluminum is what I was thinking I would make mine out of. As it is right now the gaps on the side are pretty terrible.
It's tedious and time consuming, but very simple work to make a good shroud. Cardboard makes an excellent template and I really like the colored rivets I got from Amazon. They break much more cleanly than the **** you get from the hardware store.
Biketopia that looks way better than the way my car was put together. I like that.
Taylor you may already be aware but the LT1 radiators are a bit thicker than the LS1 radiators. Not sure if that applies to parts store radiators. Whenever I have to make my next shroud, I'm going to use aluminum sheet instead of this plastic as it deforms with heat. Just sitting in the sun you can watch it warp.
Thanks, wasn't hard just a little planning and some poster board to help see it.
The parts store radiators, at least at my local few the LT and LS have different part #s and the LT is thicker.
I used the factory plastic shroud and made some simple aluminum pieces to fill in the side gaps and direct airflow. It’s been working really well. If you want, message me an email and I can send some pictures. I’m too lazy to host them and upload here.
I was reading back thru your t56 rebuild and wondering if you know if it is possible to swap in c5z 1-3 gears? Also curious what brand of carrier bearings were the wrong part, I just replaced mine and got some national from advance and the races were the wrong part in the right box and pretty much wasted my day.
I was reading back thru your t56 rebuild and wondering if you know if it is possible to swap in c5z 1-3 gears? Also curious what brand of carrier bearings were the wrong part, I just replaced mine and got some national from advance and the races were the wrong part in the right box and pretty much wasted my day.
C5Z 1-3 came in 93 only M29 trannies. Corvette stuff doesn't go directly in, syncros are different. Requires a custom mainshaft to work in an F body. The M29 stuff isn't able to be LS converted. I used a Truetrac carrier and National bearings. The problem I had with the bearings is that the one was misboxed.
C5Z 1-3 came in 93 only M29 trannies. Corvette stuff doesn't go directly in, syncros are different. Requires a custom mainshaft to work in an F body. The M29 stuff isn't able to be LS converted. I used a Truetrac carrier and National bearings. The problem I had with the bearings is that the one was misboxed.
Well guess the magnum is the only option for lower 1-3.
Sounds like National is having some packaging issues. Usually I stick with Timken but none of the parts stores carry it now and i didn't want to wait for another mail order
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