With any older vehicle, the gauges tend to become less reliable or even work at all. My Bronco is no exception. With engine and drivetrain swaps, the accuracy becomes much worse.
My stock cluster has only one working gauge and that one isn’t even correct all the time. I prefer mechanical gauges over the stock electric ones. I have already installed mechanical oil pressure and temperature gauges as I feel these are always the most important. Now it’s time to address the speedo.
Trying to repair my speedo would be a poor financial decision. This Bronco needs all new speedo cables, drive gear and speedo head unit. After all that, it likely wouldn’t be accurate since I’ve swapped the drivetrain and tire size. Since it doesn’t work anyway, I have no problem cutting up the cluster and doing my own thing. Que the demolition music:
With patience these come apart quite easily. Take your time because the old plastic can be quite brittle. It’s kind of like taking a sandwich apart by the layers.
I used a hole saw to cut a larger opening in the panel where the old rectangular speedo was and make a filler panel to insert a GPS style unit from Amazon.
Wiring was simple. Just your typical full hot, keyed hot, ground, back light and plug for the included GPS sender. Only possible flaw I found with the unit is if I wanted to change the back light color, I would have to remove the cluster from the dash. For some reason, they put all the controls on the rear of the unit. As for the GPS receiver, I have it routed out to the wiper valance and zip tied there for now. Later I will be moving it to the roof rack once it’s installed.
This was a fun little project that didn’t break the bank. These gauges are around $65 on Amazon and so far, well worth the money. Now let’s see how long it lasts. Next, I need to tackle a more accurate fuel gauge, but for now I can at least keep track of mileage with my new speedo.
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Almost Overlanding with Craig Cooper and Family 