hey, i'm putting a 99' camaro LS1 into my 1978 pace car heavily modified. i want to put a new Corvette guage set up in but i'm not sure if the wires or connectors will plug in... do i have to splice the whole thing and match it up to a vette schematic or should it just plug in...also i need info on the actual C5 corvette gauge install. do i have to modify the dash? i'm removing the outside HVAC box and putting a universal one behind the dash so i might have to make a dash to compensate for the gauges and A/C...any info will help thanks!

 

LS1tech.com

I don't think anyone has tried this, fbody gauges yes. Also heavily modified motor and a/c usually don't mix.

 

The gauges are fed serial data from the BCM. The reason that nobody's tried it is that it's pretty complicated. By all means, don't let this talk you out of it. Do more research on LS1tech. It would be really cool if you can get it to work.

 

I think Vettedan has been playing around with a set he bought off ebay. He was going to add them to his 68 vert.

 

There was a guy that on ls1tech that did it. I don't think he ever got the bugs worked out and his gas gauge never worked.

I looked into it a few years ago when I was considering adapting the complete active handling system to my car (thats why my car has C5 brakes and C5 tire sizes). It is not an easy task by any means. Everything on the dash comes from the serial data line from the BCM. At a minimum you would need the Corvette PCM, BCM and Instrument cluster. This would get you up and running with a bare minimum of instrumentation. Your gas gauge would not work and you would have numerous fault lights on dash and error codes on the digital display.

The C5 and C6 use two completely separate gas tanks with a level sender in each. The fuel comes from one tank and there is a pump in the other to feed the first so one tank will drain, then the other. when you turn off the car the tanks even out until you start it again. You would have to have two level sensors in your tank, one that went from full to half and one that went from half to empty. Then it could work.

Without the tank level, you also wouldn't have some of the features of the dash such as MPG calculations, etc.

The digital display can display numerous paramaters of the car from engine to body to the ABS system. Without all of these systems hooked up and in tact, you would have numerous errors that you would have to scroll through everytime you started the car.

There is no way to program the Instrument cluster to get rid of these. I have contacted numerous companies about this including the manufacturer in Japan, local GM instrument repair facilities and GM themselves. I have had extensive conversations with GM engineers all the way up to Lutz himself and I don't think this is something you would want to try. By the way, if you can get a hold of him, Lutz is very nice and very willing to help with this type of project.

But if you are like me, you love a challenge and won't listen to anything I just said.