S10 Digital Dash Wiring Diagram

[Yoshi Heffernan]

Iimagine this question has been asked before but, I have a 85 GL-10 sedan with the digital dash in it. I do not like it. I am picking up a 86 GL sedan on Monday. Can I swap out the digital dash for the standard gagues in the 86?

The digital and analog dashes require different components such as the fuel tank/gas gauge sensor, the oil pressure sender, and the temperature gauge sender. These must be swapped from an analog car into a digital car.

Most of my research into dash swapping has concerned an EA82 dash, like yours. I believe that the EA81 dash swap is complicated by more extensive wiring harness modifications - although Rick would know more about this than I do.

I don't know if it's possible to hook up the trip computer to the analog dash - that may require plumbing analog and digital sensors so that the two units can receive from their required types - but if you have to remove it from the car entirely, then it will leave you with extra wires which will not be connected to the analog dash.

You will need to map the wiring from the harness to the dash, so that you can either make an adapter for the harness, or modify the car's harness itself. Either way, you need to crossreference the wiring harnesses.

With the GL-10 having so many features.... you'll just screw it all up if you try. Believe me - it's a serious, serious endevour. Took me a month to figure out the EA81, and I only wanted *some* of the gauges cause it's my off-roader, and I use Autometer guages for better accuracy. But my situation arose because the EA81 dash's have a tendancy to fail that the EA82 dash's do not. Otherwise I would have never bothered. The EA82 digi's are cool, and very rarely have problems. If you want an analog dash it's a lot easier to just find an analog car.

however, adding an oil pressure gauge and a reliable water temp gauge are excellent ideas. If you feel like it, go for it. It might simplify your project to scrap the stock oil and temp gauges, and see if you could butcher some real ones into the cluster or something... Thats about the closest thing that I eve imagined happening in my case. With the rust on the vehicle though.. doubtful.

DO IT. Yes it's a pain-in-the-rear-bumper, and will take a lot more time than you would think. But afterward, every time you drive, you'll look at the dash and say to yourself "I did this! It works 'cause of me!"

Here is a post with pics of my digi to analogue dash conversion. You will definitely need the schematics for the dash. Subi81 had some posted on the list a while back and can be found here. Good luck.

PS. Before you rewire stuff, make the holes behind the dash where the wires feed through wider. I had a heck of a time getting my A dash to fit because the excess wires took up too much room between the dash and the wall.

No, it *seems* neat... but some of us at least would prefer accurate instrumentation.. and I am not even talking about how well it DOES read out.. My fuel gauge may as well just be a numer from zero to ten, with a low fuel light that comes on at "1." Same with the temp gauge. My RPMs go up in increments of 125.. thats kinda lame, when you start thinking about it. (By the way, to Fuji with those people for dividing it into 8 instead of 10...) Plus, no oil pressure gauge, or voltmeter. The older (86 and before) GL/Loyale style cars had an amber digi dash, which had some cooler things going on, but it (apparently? hearsay) was much more difficult to see in sunlight sometimes, and i think was a tad more prone to failure. Not that its all that awful, I am just trying to explain to you the myriad reasons so many people have this idea after getting a car with the digi-dash.. besides, NO 20 year old digital panel in a car, thats been left outside for a significant portion if not all its life, is going to be in brand new condition..

It would be neat to see one brand new I guess, a much higher "cool factor" than it has at age 19.... but the age, the poorly broken down readout, and the fact that it removes two gauges from the cluster are the three primary motivators of this swap.. plus some of us prefer digital watches, some prefer analog.

I had the 86 digital dash, and I agree it sucks. Mine would all go dim from time to time in the center and left portions. It would blink like that too when I used the turnsignals sometimes. It would go off on the right only if I had all the doors locked and defrost off, basically so no indicator lights were on over there. had to be a ground problem or something in the dash.Ussually I just whacked the dashboard and it would work again. I had it for 3 year and It had been that way for 6 years at least with the guy I bought it from. He said it did it when he bought it! Also the temp gauge would just disappear intermitently. The CRUISE portion of it didn't display anything.

My tach did go by increments of 100 so that was nice. Outside temp gauge was always spot on so that was nice too. I just realy hate the lack of an oil pressure and voltage gauge. Also it is totally invisible if you have any glare in the day.

I wonder how different the 85-86 and 87+ digidash wiring is? The one difference I see is that on the 87-up dashes, the outside temperature reading is on the trip computer instead of the main dash. Reason I mention is that the 87+ digitals are green instead of amber and are a LOT easier to read (and most of the ones I've run into have all worked properly... I've got an 86 GL-10 sedan and the temp and fuel gauges are the only things that are flakey on it...)

I have always preferred ammeters to voltmeters... northwet should understand, the older datsuns all came with ammeters and thats just what I learned to monitor... I know its all a wash, but I usually have a multimeter if I REALLY wanna know the volts anyhow.. at one point I butchered a cigarette plug just to give me a quick-acces spot to be able to double check, because I was having a fuel injection problem and I wanted to monitor voltage directly, rather than inferring it from the amperage shown....

Yeah - they are cheaper too. Ammeter's are a lot less expensive to produce. Also an excelent idea to have, but more useful for those who have lots of aftermarket accesories. For those with largely stock electrics it's more useful to have a voltmeter, and better for john public to just see a gauge in the "green mean ok" range than an ammeter than bounces all over and actually requires some knowledge to read. Basically they resulted in way too many complaints, so voltmeters took over as a simple pass/fail for the charging systems.

Worked up some new land I was able to pick up on Saturday, was really nice to do fall tillage in November with temps over 20*C - don't get that much around here! Sadly, it did involve some frustrations. Noticed after I got out to remove discs from transport lock when I got back into tractor the digital RPM read out of the dash wasn't lit up. Everything else in the tractor seemed to work, lights, radio, gauges on the right (fuel, temps, amps)? Checked the fuses, they were all good. I removed a couple to check as the shadows I couldn't see the wires if broken. Replaced them where I found them and then I heard the hour meter clicking, it was counting as it should. The dash was lit up again - great! Jumped back into seat to start discing, it went out again. ?

I recently replaced the two fuse blocks (as my original ones melted and took out my lights) and all 4 flasher units on the top of cab with LED's - but everything had been working just fine. I checked all the wires I installed on the new fuse blocks - they are good too?

Don't have the memory I should have any more. The feed wire is light blue from key switch to junction block then changes color somewhere between junction block and 5amp fuse. Light blue again to data center plug. Black wire in that plug is ground and goes to dash ground. I can pull up no picture of this in my mind. Diagram also shows black wire continuing to tractor ground at right battery ground. Think I would start with voltmeter at fuse. If voltage on both sides chase down that dash ground. THIS IS ALL WRONG DISREGARD.

Data center has two feeds from key switch. Both change colors on the way. One is violet on both ends. Other is red violet at switch and changes to red black at data center. Feed to switch is red black wire from 3 amp fuse. This is a separate feed than normal battery terminal at switch.

Could be - but hoping it isn't as I think I replaced it not long after I bought the tractor used? I could be wrong about the replacement....but wouldn't other things be effected from the key switch? The analog gauges all work as they should, when key switch is switched on - the fuel gauge moves, and I think the amp gauge does a little dance too?

No - well, I say no - but when I tried it this morning - it worked for like 45 seconds, tractor running and it registered 800 rpm, then it crapped out (the digital dash) and everything showed black again. The hour meter stopped ticking as well. I shut off the tractor and tried it again, nope still black. So that's why I'm wondering if its a ground? Where are all the grounds that feed the dash located? I tired googling issues like this, one guy had the issue on an 86 series I think it was that had a digital dash - he was looking at cleaning/replacing RPM sensor? Would that effect the other lights (doubtful)? That's why I'm thinking a ground somewhere or a short?

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