Digital dashes

[Bennyt]

On our C10, I went with factory gauges and then color matched the faces to the paint. Not a great picture and it's substantially lighter.

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[bruisedbanana79]

That is my question with a obdII port on an Ls how much less wiring do you need to do?

I wouldn't say it will save you days of wiring. You run a BIM box that plugs into the OBD port and will pull the following: Speed, Tach, Coolant Temp, Check engine light, Intake temp, trans temp(if running a modern trans). So in reality it saves you from wiring up the speedo generator, tach and having to find a spot for the coolant sensor. The bonus for me is being able to keep an eye on trans temps and have a more accurate data in the display screens.

 

[Rome03]

Anyone have autometer digital dashes? Seems like we’ve covered the other options pretty well.

 

[Dleslie212]

I'll second what @legopnuematic said. I've got Squarebody Syndicate's version of the Dakota Digitals in my '85 and they're awesome. Very nicely built, easy/simply hookups and looks OEM+. They're really the only gauges I'd ever consider paying money for.

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I have various friends that have used all the other brands and they simply don't measure up. Intellitronix is absolute junk, terrible quality and they fail constantly. Do any kind of research on them and you'll see lots of threads complaining about them. NVU (Nu Vintage) are great looking gauges, not bad quality but as Spencer said, the backside is not clean and hookup is a royal pain. It's like those old school electric gauges from the '80s that just a bundle of snakes in the back

Here's some pics from the install of my Dakotas. Their brain box can be mounted in various places and now people make brackets to hold this and the BIM modules if you have those too. My truck is LS swapped with a GM computer, so I used one of Dakota's BIM modules to pull most of my info directly from the computer, the only Dakota sensor I used was the Oil Pressure. Everything else either came through the BIM or from the OE gauge plug (turn signals, fuel level, high beam indicator, etc).

This is me testing everything prior to doing final install. You can see the gauges, the main brain box (the larger one) and the BIM module (the little box)

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I ended up just zip tying the brain box and the BIM up inside against the large sections of loom, off to the left, so they're nice and sturdy. I plan to buy one of those mounts at some point in the future to mount them better, they just didn't exist back then. I thought I had a picture of them mounted, but I don't unfortunately.

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Here's a couple different versions of those mounts I'm talking about:

Mounting Bracket for Dakota Digital - 73-87 C10

Laser cut steel bracket mounts a Dakota Digital instrument system control box plus an BIM-01-2 as well!

azproperformance.com

ModernC10 1973-1987 Dakota Digital Control Box/Expansion Module Mount

When doing modern wiring jobs in these C10’s the real estate for mounting components gets used up quick ModernC10 devised our high quality, precision laser cut Dakota Digital control box/expansion module bracket. These brackets fit all 3 sizes of Dakota Digital expansion modules, and are...

www.modernc10.com

I installed my DD kit along with that bracket a few months back. The bracket is great, but only allows for like two BIMs. I had two that wouldn't fit and had to zip tie them up under the dash. I'd rather have saved the money and zip tied all of them instead of shelling out for the bracket

 

[Zelph]

What bracket? The Modern C10 bracket will hold 4 bim modules. Comes with all the hardware needed.

 

[xm20k]

Anyone have autometer digital dashes? Seems like we’ve covered the other options pretty well.

I run Autometer, but I run a mix of mechanical gauges (Water, trans temp, oil pressure) with a GPS Speedo, tach, volt and fuel gauges in a classic dash panel. Was looking for a future truck that I'm planning to keep more stock vs the current 78.

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[CalSgt]

Another Dakota fan here

Never mind my color choices, the needles and faces are almost infinitely adjustable color wise

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[Dleslie212]

What bracket? The Modern C10 bracket will hold 4 bim modules. Comes with all the hardware needed.

The AZ Pro bracket. I've never seen the C10 Modern till today. This was last year

 

[bluex]

I never noticed before, my RTX gauges go to 120, Huck’s goes to 140, the HDX on their website go to 160.

I picked the RTXs partially because of that. Having the speedo go to 160 is a waste of space imo.

I also like how they look much better than the others. I might not use all the features on them but since I'm going to be staring at them the most the looks are most important.

 

[Broken85]

I used a New Vintage. It actually Looks great, but I had to have the tach replaced 4 times before it finally work correctly. It would burn out everytime after 3-4 hours of use. Yes, that means pulling the entire dash apart 4 times. Speedometer also slaves the oil pressure gauge and when the oil pressure gauge quit working, that meant a new spedo, so that was a 5th R&I. The dash mount is kind of junky and it took like 10 moch-ups to get them all in the window in the center without a gap. Ignore the glow on the parking lights. That is from the LCD bulbs, it has nothing to do with the dash.

In retrospect, I should have went with a Dakota Digital, but it has been about a year without any more gauges burning out or issues, so hopefully I have taken it apart for the last time. New Vintage customer service was great, and didn’t argue about any replacements, but I am not sure I have forgiven them yet for making me do that job 5 times.

All the wiring was extremely manual and you have to extremely detail oriented. I didn’t see the adapter when I bought my kit 3 years ago, so a lot of cutting soldering and shrink wrapping. I had to add relays to make the parking brake, oil light and 4 wheel drive lights on the dash work. Seems like a plug and play option was just within reach for them to complete and they decided to just give you 20 pigtails instead. Instruction diagrams were good, I did find some mistakes in the instructions and I had to call them to make sure I was right and they were wrong. (I was)

 

[CountKrunk]

Id pay 1.5x to not redo it 5 times thats for sure

 

[bluex]

I used a New Vintage. It actually Looks great, but I had to have the tach replaced 4 times before it finally work correctly. It would burn out everytime after 3-4 hours of use. Yes, that means pulling the entire dash apart 4 times. Speedometer also slaves the oil pressure gauge and when the oil pressure gauge quit working, that meant a new spedo, so that was a 5th R&I. The dash mount is kind of junky and it took like 10 moch-ups to get them all in the window in the center without a gap. Ignore the glow on the parking lights. That is from the LCD bulbs, it has nothing to do with the dash.

In retrospect, I should have went with a Dakota Digital, but it has been about a year without any more gauges burning out or issues, so hopefully I have taken it apart for the last time. New Vintage customer service was great, and didn’t argue about any replacements, but I am not sure I have forgiven them yet for making me do that job 5 times.

All the wiring was extremely manual and you have to extremely detail oriented. I didn’t see the adapter when I bought my kit 3 years ago, so a lot of cutting soldering and shrink wrapping. I had to add relays to make the parking brake, oil light and 4 wheel drive lights on the dash work. Seems like a plug and play option was just within reach for them to complete and they decided to just give you 20 pigtails instead. Instruction diagrams were good, I did find some mistakes in the instructions and I had to call them to make sure I was right and they were wrong. (I was)

Well the results look great, so I'd say it was worth the effort, but I also didn't have to do it

 

[CalSgt]

I picked the RTXs partially because of that. Having the speedo go to 160 is a waste of space imo.

I also like how they look much better than the others. I might not use all the features on them but since I'm going to be staring at them the most the looks are most important.

lol… a speedo that goes to 160 and a tach that goes to 12K

 

[Old Guy Bill]

Dakota has some great looking instruments for sure, but that's a lot of $$, even for the lowest priced pkg.
I'd like to just update the gauges, not the tach & speedo...
I don't see any of the vendors offering that type of pkg.
I don't want to hack up the IP either.

 

[Trucksareforwork]

No clock?

I’m out.