mx5cartalk.com

I have another gauge cluster I would like to put in the car, so in the interest of maintaining the odometer, is swapping it to the new cluster a difficult thing to do? Can this even be done with an NA odometer? In searching past threads I see that Sliq has done an Odo transplant in the past, but I imagine that might be quite different on the NB.

The cluster to transplant in is from a Japanese car and has AWD gauge faces, so would like the needles to read correctly as the the faces go to 200km/hr only.

I'm presuming that the best way to maintain needle integrity is to use the the Japanese cluster, rather than try and make the AU cluster in my car move the needles at a different rate?

If I can't do this swap and have correct needle movement I'll pass on the gauges install... I really bought the cluster for the needle caps

Should just be a straight swap with all plugs/looms fitting correctly. My 323 has a 240kph speedo, but the JDM version only goe to 180kph. But when fitted, runs prefectly and correctly. The clusters are designed to read the imputs given and display everything accordly.

if it'll really bother you that your speedo etc. aren't reading spot on, then i wouldn't change it..

mine reads only about 1-2 KPH slow (which i think is actually the right speed because there's a 1-2 second lag on the gps and at constant speed its spot on).

for some reason, when i changed my odometer from my audm cluster to the jap spec cluster, the speedo didn't read correctly (even though it was untouched). the audm cluster had 220KPH limit whereas the jdm cluster had 180KPH. i then tried changing one of the dials over, but the holes where they are mounted on the actual cluster were different.

I guess I hadn't thought about how small the difference in the speedo's will be... its only 20km/hr over the range of the dials. Thats a difference I could live with.

Its more the odometer that I am hoping to maintain. Its the one consistent register of the life/age of the car I guess.

Having poked around with it a bit this afternoon, with a lot of patience the odo in the Japanese cluster could be wound upwards to match the existing km's on the car...