Let's see if I can outline this from my phone while trying to heal up from a sprained ankle, and torn meniscus.
Finalized my gauge wiring last night. Gauges need lots of things, switched 12v, 12v for needle, lcd and warning lights, 12v for gauge backlighting and constant 12c for the speedo to save satellite locations. The quad gauge gets voltage reading from switched power, but has sensor inputs for oil pressure, coolant temp and fuel level. Muy cumplicado.
Trying to reduce the number of wiring harness modifications, this is the route I took.
- Switched power and associated grounds got fed to the terminals located on top of the factory tachometer. I'm retaining it anyway (nothing else to put in that spot) and doing this reduces my connectors. Both the tiny Tach and gauge harness get switched power from here.
- constant power and factor fuel gauge wires were relegated to a three pin weatherpak connector. Constant power comes spliced from the column harness, a leftover from the po. Pin 12 and 13 of the factory quad gauge connector supply a circuit to the factory fuel sending unit (verified with ohmmeter). This is connected to the fuel sender wires in the gauge, and to the constant power wire from the gauge harness. Gauge side of the connector shown.
- gauge lighting was tied into the factory tach light bulb leads. Red/stripe is hot, white/stripe is ground, through the rheostat. Both the pointer light harness and elwire dimmer harness are connected here
- as previously discussed, the tiny Tach rg174 Coax cable was cut and re-terminated with solder/crimp sma connectors, as shown. Once again, gauge side connector shown. I used a bulkhead connector only because I couldn't find a female sma rg174 crimp connector on Amazon that wasn't a bulkhead connector
Finally, this is how it looks before being installed. Looks kinda messy imo, but its as clean as I felt I could make it without further factory harness modifications. We're I to install a painless harness in this truck, built an entirely custom gauge cluster, I could make this much cleaner.