instrument cluster upgrade?

[ChemMan]

My 1995 Lesabre has the wide sweeping speedometer style dash and I would really like to have at least a tachometer to go along with it. Has anyone attempted to swap out the clusters? Is it simply a plug in deal or does it involve some wiring? I've searched the forums and found a few threads, but no actual answers. Just people speculating. Anyone with actual experience, I'll have no problem with the work required. Thanks!

[mcqueary]

Well I'm another that is speculating. Hope you don't mind. But I did look at the 1995 Lesabre Factory Service manual and it appears that one would have to do some rewiring at the least. I'm lucky since I already have the gauges.

I assume you have the RPO code U23 Indicators Cluster and you want to change it to RPO code UB3 Gages Cluster. The fact that these are two different production codes tells me it's not trivial to change from one to another. Also just checking a few of the wires and connectors verifies that. As one example, the Antilock indicator on U23 is on pin A6 of the Instrument Cluster PC board and on pin 20 of the UB3 Information Center PC board.

Before I would tackle this I would get the Factory Service manual and create a wiring chart showing the wires on the cable harneses of your U23 and see where each wire should hook up to the UB3 Gages Cluster and see if every wire has somewhere to go and see what connections on UB3 have no wires. And then there's the mechanical connector issues....

Also there are sensor issues. I seem to recall that the oil pressure sensor has both a switch and a variable resistor so it's compatible with both the oil pressure light and the oil pressure gauge. And then there's the tach signal from the electronic ignition module used in UB3. Hmmm where can I find this wire and on and on...