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Instrument Pannel Upgrades And Preparing For Hydrogen

By ToyotaBubba, February 11, 2012



Howdy,

I thought I'd share what I found works on upgrading/changing out instrument gauges etc. If you're stuck with a corolla or prizm with just a speedometer, don't loose hope... Even some models with all power options seem to be lacking the tach which was the case with mine. I think the following holds true for 98-02 models, but it looks like later model instrument panels in 9th gen rollas or prizms may still be the same as the 8th gen, but someone would need to confirm that to be sure.

In some reading on various blogs/forums, it sounded like some were swapping out instrument clusters successfully, so I thought I'd try. I found a 99 corolla that had an instrument cluster with the tach and removed my speedometer from my old cluster and installed it into the cluster I got from the 99 corolla and everything turned out to be an exact swap and connectors on the back of the instrument panels were the same. Just be gentle when removing the hardware that holds the speedometer onto the cluster housing as you don't want to damage the flex circuit. Oh, you do have to take apart the cluster housing to get to get to your original speedometer, so do go easy with that too, as the plastic tabs etc. aren't very sturdy.

I found that it was good to check all bulbs to make sure ones that were burned out or dark, were replaced with good bulbs. All the different indicators seem to all work and function normally even though they were in different locations on the old cluster. The tach works fine, and the only thing amiss, was the digital display under the tach showed something like an '-E' which after much research, found out that the display was for the outside temperature display, and without the outside sensor which the manuf doesn't bother to plug into the wire harrnes, get's an error reading.

It turns out that there's a connector with nothing attached in front of the radiator and behind the grill where a short plastic sensor about 1 1/2" long plugs into that connector which then sends temperature readings to the instrument cluster. Once I found that out, I went to a junk yard and found a prizm/corolla with a tach and sure enough, there was the sensor plugged in. Got the sensor and plugged it into my car, and now I have outside temperature being listed on the replacement instrument cluster. All is now working and complete with the upgraded cluster. Why they would make/sell an LSI Prizm with all power and skimp on not putting a cluster with a tach is beyond logic... I think I spent about $15 for the instrument cluster with the tach, and a few bucks for the sensor. Having a tach makes working on an engine much easier as well as being able to get a feel for what rpms are giving you the best fuel economy etc.

Adding a scanguage that plugs into the OBDII connector just under the dash on the left, that fits nicely in the little vanity drawer in the dash on the left by the driver door without having to hard mount it or velcro it somewhere ON the dash works great if your vehicle trim has it, and gives all kinds of additional real-time data about what's going on in the engine, shift points and rpm levels, and how that affects fuel economy. I originally was hoping there would be a nice fit putting the scanguage inside or along side of the instrument cluster, but no such luck. Having it to the left and kind of down and slightly behind the steering wheel makes a person have to lean over to see some of the readings, but if your car has the little vanity drawer that opens up, it's an almost exact fit and you can route the cable through the opening and then into the OBDII connector so that there are no cables hanging down which is nice.

The only thing at least the scanguage or maybe the OBDII system is lacking, is reporting the air/fuel ratio. The ECU has to be keeping track of that in some manner, so it sure would be nice if the OBDII system would also report that. I did find an external air/fuel ratio guage that I think hooks up to the before cat O2 sensor, but that's just one more thing I will have to hang inside on the dash. A scanguage does show open or closed loop status, and was helpful in finding out that the pre-cat O2 sensor was bad as a result of the prior owner sentencing an amost new engine to death by not bothering to change the oil regularly, causing sludge buildup, stuck oil rings and buring oil and the final blow, having an exhaust cam sprocket sheer off due to the cam seizing due to lack of oil). After 1/2 year of searching to find if anyone else had successfully dealt with the 1ZZFE oil consumption problem, I struck out on my own and if I can figure out how to upload pics, will post some pics and notes as to what I did to modify the pistons to avert that problem. Only in the last couple days did I notice someone else posting a very good detailed overview of an engine teardown and piston modification routine, but I think my piston mod is a bit more classy default_smile Due to the PO not changing the oil, it turned out it damaged the pre cat sensor (am hoping he didn't deep six the cat and aft O2), but it wasn't until I put the scanguage on that it was evident the pre cat O2 was bad even though no engine codes were being reported as the O2 sensor was very slow to cycle etc. Modifying the wire harness and putting a scope on it confirmed it was bad, so people need to make sure you change your oil before the oil looses it's protective properties. From what I've read, the pre-cat O2 sensor is supposed to have about a 1 second cycle back n forth on it's waveform, and open/closed loop status of the ECM should change very quickly i.e. in the milliseconds, not take seconds to switch from open to closed loop which this one was doing.

The next step, now that I have a tach and realtime monitoring, is to look into adding hydrogen... I may have made a mistake on planning to do the hydrogen on a post 1995 vehicle (wanted the OBDII data), as the pre OBDII cars had less computer controls and are supposed to be easier to fool/program the ECU when modifying the air/fuel mixture, and of course going back to non ECU cars with carbs and no ECU would probably be much easier. Was hoping to do some serious volume with hydrogen systems, but not sure I can be successful in over-riding the ECU and the air/fuel mix to where substantial mileage gains are able to be realized by trying to add substantial hydrogen volume.

Hope this feedback on upgrading the instrument cluster helps others out. It's a drag to try to figure out what an engine is doing if you don't have a tach in front of you and was a lot easier and cleaner looking than having to hard wire in an after market tach and either hard mount to the hood or cut and hack on the dash to mount one on the older cars. Also, if anyone has had any experience on adding hydrogen on these 8th gen engines, do let me know.

Thanks!

Hey Bubba,

This is a really neat write up you have here. I am particularly interested in the tach for non-tach cluster swap. My girlfriend bought a 1999 A/T corolla over the summer, and it is the first car she has owned that does not have a tach in it. Bothers her quite a bit, especially since this is her first 1ZZ (noisy) so she thinks the engine is going to blow up. I thought installing a tach would make her feel a little more eased lol. I was wondering how difficult it would be to just drop in a new cluster one day and surprise her, but you already answered that, looks like a piece of cake.

From what you have described for the 1999 it just seems like a drop in type deal.

I was wondering though, as far as the outside temp gauge goes, what's it look like, and where is it located? I have a junk yard that gets plenty of 8th gen rollas in and could easily obtain everything I need, but I'd need to know what I'm looking for. I think if I want to do the swap I'd like to install a gauge too just to be thorough.

If you find any way to post a picture or two I'd be very grateful.

Thanks for the great info!

I have been wanting to this for a long time. But was put off by high prices of clusters with tach. On eBay, they always seem to be going for more than $100. If you get your hands on another such cluster for 8th gen for so cheap, I would love to buy it from you. Will pay for shipping and for your efforts to pull it out of the donor car. Contact me: crypticlineage@gmail.com. Thank you.

You got it. I'll check with my contacts down at the salvage yard this weekend. I might be able to get a good haul (big now storm this week, lots of crunched vehicles.)

They are pricey though, I can probably get a significant discount on the parts since I have to pull them from the wreckage myself, it will likely end up being less than $80, so it'll be worth it for sure even after shipping.

Great. Thanks HeadDent.

Many available from salvage yards all over USA (and Canada) from $25 and up, as well as more listed without a price.

Search for "Toyota Corolla not FX" - "Speedometer(See also Inst. Cluster)", then select "MPH, cluster (black face), tach, outside temp, red illumination" or "MPH, cluster (black face), tach, outside temp, w/o red illumination" in 2001 or 2002, or select "MPH, cluster, tach, outside temp, black face" or "MPH, cluster, tach, outside temp, white face" in 1998, 1999, or 2000.

Don't bother looking in "Instrument Cluster(See also Speedo)" or "Tachometer".

http://www.car-part.com/

Thanks dom. Thats very helpful. When you search using instrument cluster, very few come up. With your method, literally hundreds of results showed up. As I found out though, all of the cheap ones are without tach, they're just incorrectly listed. I was able to find one from the same model year as mine, for $55.00 shipped.

Hi 1st Gear,

Been busy with other stuff and just now getting back to car stuff. yea, the 1ZZFE is really buzzy. Even more so if any of the valve clearances are too loose. What some other posts I've read mention is that on this engine's head, the valve clearances actually get tighter as the engine wears (strange), but more than one seasoned mechanic confirmed this. The only thing I can figure that can cause that, is the valve seat wears faster than the valve stem end, cam lobe or 'lifter' surfaces. One of the big japan engine rebuilders I get parts from as well as and other spec's in manuals indicate that the chain and sprockets themselves do not have replacement durations, but only the chain guides. I spec'd chain and sprockets on 3 used engines, and although 2 were worn more than the other, all three were still within spec, so I guess if a person changes oil religiously and/or maybe uses synthetics as well, chain and sprocket wear would be minimal. Some of the buzz comes from the chain and sprocket assy, but loose valve clearances really add to that buzz noise, as one engine has a couple of lifters that are a bit loose and it tends to radiate through the engine.

I'm not an additive addict, but over the years have tried different ones, and knew the original manuf of a metal additive froma manuf that is no longer in operation that I used religiously back in the 80s and 90s that supposedly prolong bought out. I can't get anyone to confirm that prolong in fact bought out and is using the prior manuf's chemical metal conditioner formulas, but it seems to have similar chemical makeup of the now defunct manuf's products. I still use prolong in my machinery, and it really quiets noisy engines down. It's not an oil thickening type of conditioner, but . Can't say for sure that prolong is the exact same additive, but I used the original formulation from the other manuf. in a differential with a chipped gear that went from being totally silent before, to a horrible howl/growl, and after 500 miles using the original additive, the howl was gone and I put another 75kmiles on the vehicle before I sold it and had no failures even though one gear edge was chipped. I've used it in other machinery with same results. Less wear, lower temps, better efficiency. I've seen some posts indicating some various oils/additives quiet the 1ZZFE (some mentioned that some of the synthetics helped quiet down the 1ZZFE) down more than others, but that's what I've used in most machinery to quiet things down and to increase run time. There's also a guy that recently posted a very detailed post on one of the boards I noticed recently (extensive photo's and all) detailing an engine overhaul on the 1ZZFE while the engine is still in the car, and he too commented about valve clearances getting tighter as the engine wears, but also goes into detail on dismantling the top side and setting valve clearances with the engine still in the car. You may want to look for that post if you want to try to remove the cams and adjust the valves to quiet the engine down some as he provides excellent photos as well. You'll have to look for it though, as I forget which board I saw it on (his post has to do with fixing the notorious oil burning problem on the 1ZZFE's and fixing it by correcting the collapsed oil rings and modifying the pistons to get better oil flow).

Regarding the instrument cluster, I guess the wrecking yards here are less greedy (or don't have as big a market base to sell to), but if I recall, I think they charged me about $18 for an instrument cluster with tach from a toyota. You have to carefully take apart the housing (take the clear face off of the housing), then remove your original speedo from the old cluster (if you want to retain your original miles) and swap out the speedos as mentioned above. The temp gauge itself is right on the cluster just below the tach (it's a digital display) that will give you an error code if the sensor isn't plugged into the wire harness connector that's just behind the grill and in front of the radiator. The wire harness connector is pointing down, so if you look up from under the car and you see an empty connector, the sensor isn't there. Cars w/o tach's seem to still have the wire harness connector in place. The sensor is in a cast blob of black plastic on the end of a terminal connector with a dull point on the end, pointing down, with the other end having the connector end that is on the up-side that's plugged into the wire harness connector, and is about 1 1/2 inches long. You may want to take a pair of dikes along and just cut the wire harness just above the connector as it's hard to see well, and get up under there to competently try to un-clip the connector and pull out the sensor which seems to be stuck in the connector real tight. Those connectors seem really tight, and even when I plugged the sensor into my car wire harness, it pushed in really hard. Once you plug in the sensor, your dash temp guage should show an outside temperature reading when the ignition is on. I found it interesting to notice that except when idling and the engine is hot, the 'outside' air temp is only a few degrees cooler than what is reported by the intake air temp sensor that the engine computer is monitoring, which makes sense.

Also, if your friend's corolla only has a 3sp, the 'buzz' and noise will be much greater, as the revs are much higher on a 3sp than on a 4sp (3sp with overdrive - button on side of shifter denotes a 4sp). Your rpms will be up over 3,000 when getting up to highway speeds. I think mine which has a 3sp is up around 3,200 at 70mph. If you have a 4sp, a person should be seeing only about 2,400 to 2,700 at highway speeds. Much lower rpms and less buzz for sure.

Hope this helps, and hope the instrument cluster exchange went well.

Cheers

Toyotabubba: My cluster swap went very well. Here is the diy: http://www.crypticlineage.net/diy then click on interior mods

Thanks for your help.

Hey guys, I know it's been a minute since I post about this but I finally got a hold of a handful of 8th generation corolla instrument clusters from S models. They have tachometers! Anyways, If anyone wants to get their hands on one of these I'd be happy to let you buy them from me for the cost I paid from the salvage yard (trying to give back to the forum here, help everyone out). I paid $32 a piece, I've got 3 of them on hand, they all work well and are the best ones I could find, no scratches or anything but they are a little dusty. I only bought the ones that were still installed in the vehicle to avoid any corroded ones. So if anyone wants one just PM me or email me, I'm pretty sure the cheapest way to ship them will be in a $14 flat rate box, so about $46 will be the total cost to get it from here to you. Again, thanks for the great idea of upgrading! My girlfriend is pretty happy, although she said I should buy her jewelry next time haha



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