Building a new dash is something we have been excited about for a while but we have always preferred performance over looks and the center mounted stock gauges and small Garmin GPS had been doing the trick until now. With the recent suspension upgrades and shock tuning we have been driving faster and covering more ground so it was time for a real GPS and long range radio.
Out With The Old
The first step was removing all unnecessary wires. We had already cleaned out all of the spare wires from the rear half of the Jeep but there was a substantial amount of wires left from the A/C, stock radio and who knows what else up front. Also, as part of the new dash we planned to put a kill switch on the positive side of the battery. This would not only make us one step closer to race legal but would allow us to kill the power to the entire Jeep while still powering the VX2200 Rugged Radio and 7″ Lowrance HDS-7 Gen2 Touch screen GPS, preserving our location and communication ability. And, since we already had the whole front of the Jeep apart we decided to put in a push button start just for fun.
In With The New
After we had everything pulled out and the push button start installed and tested, it was time to wire the new gauges. We wanted the standard tachometer, speedo, oil pressure, temp, and volts. But we also added a transmission and oil temp to keep an eye on some vital temperatures when running in the desert heat. We have uses a Sunpro gauge for our trans temp for years and loved it. Because of Sunpro’s reliability decided to stick with the brand we trust for the rest of our gauges. We already had a trans temp sensor installed, and was able to wire the volt gauge using the old 12v signal from the stock gauges so those two were simple. I bought and installed an aftermarket fuel gauge in the tank and used the factory wiring to get the signal from the rear to the front of the Jeep. I installed the oil pressure and oil temp sensor in the factory location. Initially, I also installed the engine temp in the factory location, replacing the stock sensor. But after some research we found the PCM needs the engine temp to adjust the fuel mapping in relation to engine temp. I reinstalled the stock sensor and added a second temp sensor for the new gauge. Everything wired up pretty easily except our tachometer. With a totally PCM controlled Jeep and no isolated tach wire running into the stock gauge cluster we didn’t have anywhere to pull a signal for RPMs. After some research we ended up buying an adaptor that wires inline on the ground wire of the coil packs and converts that signal into a traditional tach signal for our Sunpro gauge. With all of the new sensors wired and gauges working I started laying out the dash.
We had gotten used to our center mounted gauges so we wanted to keep the new ones in the middle as well. About 40% of our drive time is solo so we couldn’t have the gauges and GPS on the passenger side in true race truck fashion. With everything drawn onto cardboard we started cutting into the .025 2’x6’ piece of aluminum.
This time around we added a circuit breakers from K4 Switches in San Diego next to each switch for easy trail repair. Wiring the breakers, switches and Sunpro gauges into one solid piece of aluminum took three days and the better part of 10 hours. After a careful double check, we plugged everything in and it bolted up just as planned. Everything was wired into a repurposed plug from the factory wiring harness so the entire dash can be slid in and out as one piece if we ever have to replace or fix anything. After one test in the garage and one final street test we are ready for some trail testing over the upcoming Halloween weekend.
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