Installing Rallye Dash in a '74 duster issues

[thanson_mopar]

I have a complete dash (metal frame/bezel/gauges ect....) from a '67 Barracuda. I want to set it up in my 74 Duster. I have a few hurdles.

-If I send out the rallye gauges for rebuild/re calibration will they be safe enough to use? Most concerned about water temp and oil pressure gauge. Should I worry about the ammeter? I would prefer a voltmeter. The ammeter in my dusters standard dash was destroyed due to high heat/shorted out it looks like.

-Can anyone recommend a person/company to do the cleaning/rebuilding/recalibration of factory gauges? I'm not building a show car but do want them to be accurate and reliable.

-I want to add an aftermarket mini tach into the tach delete hole. Anyone else done this?

-The barracuda dash came with a 120mph speedo. I have a 150mph speedo from a duster rally dash that I want to use. Is it a bolt in deal? What do I need to calibrate to make the 150mph speedo to work in a car that came with 120mph speedo?

-Dash wiring, I still have the standard dash/wiring harness that came in my '74. Is it easiest to just buy a '67 rally dash harness and somehow adapt it to the rest of my cars factory wiring. What needs to be done there?

-Barracuda came with a dash mounted ignition, My duster came with the column mounted ignition. (manual trans) It would be cool to have the dash mounted key but I'm sure easier to retain the column ignition and just block off the dash hole. Any thoughts?

-Any good glue/epoxy/filler for repairing those plastic bezels? where to send to re chrome plastic?

Thanks for all the help

 

[72bluNblu]

No calibration of the gauges is necessary because of the swap to the '74, they will all work just fine. Or at least they'll be as accurate as factory gauges were to begin with. Same with the 120 to 150 mph speedo, there's no change in calibration outside of the the speedometer itself (the gears in the speedo itself are different). As for having the gauges rebuilt, Redline Gauge Works is a name I see a lot. They also do ammeter to voltmeter conversions, although you can do that yourself pretty easily.

For the electrical, it's not that bad. I did this swap on my '74 Duster as well. Believe it or not, Ma Mopar actually used most of the same color wires for the same parts for pretty much all of the A-body run. Obviously a few things changed, and the layout changed, but for the most part you just have to move the existing wires to new locations in the plugs. The same round connector is used for the main gauge panel, although the rallye dash has an additional 3 pin connector that you have to supply by splicing into some of the wires. I made a "key" for my swap to keep things straight. There are some minor differences between the years of the rallye dashes, so my key may not be 100% for your swap, but it should be close. On the bottom next to the '74 dash key I put all the locations where the wires have to be moved, for example "A: Brake light send -Blue/white = F" means that on the '74 dash the brake light sender, which is blue with a white stripe, is in position A. To make it work for the rally dash, you have to move that wire to position F on the key.

My own conversion and restoration is in my build thread, it starts at post #34 and goes from there. My "new" '74 Duster- or why I need a project like a hole in the head
Can't help you with the chrome, although from what I've heard it costs a fortune. I restored my own bezel, painted it, and bought overlay's from Detroit Muscle Technologies. Items in Detroit Muscle Technologies LLC store on eBay!

 

[thanson_mopar]

No calibration of the gauges is necessary because of the swap to the '74, they will all work just fine. Or at least they'll be as accurate as factory gauges were to begin with. Same with the 120 to 150 mph speedo, there's no change in calibration outside of the the speedometer itself (the gears in the speedo itself are different). As for having the gauges rebuilt, Redline Gauge Works is a name I see a lot. They also do ammeter to voltmeter conversions, although you can do that yourself pretty easily.

For the electrical, it's not that bad. I did this swap on my '74 Duster as well. Believe it or not, Ma Mopar actually used most of the same color wires for the same parts for pretty much all of the A-body run. Obviously a few things changed, and the layout changed, but for the most part you just have to move the existing wires to new locations in the plugs. The same round connector is used for the main gauge panel, although the rallye dash has an additional 3 pin connector that you have to supply by splicing into some of the wires. I made a "key" for my swap to keep things straight. There are some minor differences between the years of the rallye dashes, so my key may not be 100% for your swap, but it should be close. On the bottom next to the '74 dash key I put all the locations where the wires have to be moved, for example "A: Brake light send -Blue/white = F" means that on the '74 dash the brake light sender, which is blue with a white stripe, is in position A. To make it work for the rally dash, you have to move that wire to position F on the key.

My own conversion and restoration is in my build thread, it starts at post #34 and goes from there. My "new" '74 Duster- or why I need a project like a hole in the head
Can't help you with the chrome, although from what I've heard it costs a fortune. I restored my own bezel, painted it, and bought overlay's from Detroit Muscle Technologies. Items in Detroit Muscle Technologies LLC store on eBay!

Awesome! Thanks for all your knowledge, I might copy your idea of shortening the bezel so It doesn't go all the way over the the glove box.

Did you clean or refinish or do anything with your gauges besides the overlays? They look good, I called redline and he quoted me around $1200.00 to go through and update/refurbish/recalibrate all mine.

 

[moparmat2000]

Also the 67 speedoneter uses a threaded on cable, 68 up speedoneter is a plug in cable. Ifvyou want to use the 67 speedo, you need to use a 67 cable.

 

[72bluNblu]

Awesome! Thanks for all your knowledge, I might copy your idea of shortening the bezel so It doesn't go all the way over the the glove box.

Did you clean or refinish or do anything with your gauges besides the overlays? They look good, I called redline and he quoted me around $1200.00 to go through and update/refurbish/recalibrate all mine.

I shortened the bezel because I actually cut my standard dash frame for the rallye cluster. If you have a rallye dash frame there will be a mounting hole out on the dash you'll have to cover if you shorten the bezel.

As for the gauges, I didn't do too much to the ones I chose, but I bought a handful of "for parts" gauge clusters and dashes and picked the best ones. They're a lot cheaper if the bezels are broken. After that I just cleaned them up and repainted the needles. I installed a digital IVR so the fuel gauge was modified for that. I also converted an ammeter over to a voltmeter but I haven't installed that one yet. The speedometer I disassembled, cleaned, lubricated and reassembled. The bezel was a lot of work, I sanded it down, installed the repair piece to fix the radio cut out and shorten the bezel, sanded more, primed, sanded more, painted, sanded, painted, polished, touched up all the lettering, etc. I removed and polished all the lenses and reassembled it.

I committed from the beginning to rebuilding everything
myself and I knew I was repairing the bezel so I bought a lot of busted stuff for cheap. In that process I got a bunch of stuff that I couldn't have fixed myself, but also a decent selection of parts I used. I actually sent several bezels back and forth to DMT, the lower overlays weren't being offered so I worked with DMT to get them made and provided several of the bezels for patterns. Not sure if I did better than the $1,200 for a restoration, probably would have saved me some time though. I will probably send off one of my 150 mph speedo's for a rebuild, the one I have bounces a little still.

 

[moparmat2000]

I shortened the bezel because I actually cut my standard dash frame for the rallye cluster. If you have a rallye dash frame there will be a mounting hole out on the dash you'll have to cover if you shorten the bezel.

As for the gauges, I didn't do too much to the ones I chose, but I bought a handful of "for parts" gauge clusters and dashes and picked the best ones. They're a lot cheaper if the bezels are broken. After that I just cleaned them up and repainted the needles. I installed a digital IVR so the fuel gauge was modified for that. I also converted an ammeter over to a voltmeter but I haven't installed that one yet. The speedometer I disassembled, cleaned, lubricated and reassembled. The bezel was a lot of work, I sanded it down, installed the repair piece to fix the radio cut out and shorten the bezel, sanded more, primed, sanded more, painted, sanded, painted, polished, touched up all the lettering, etc. I removed and polished all the lenses and reassembled it.

I committed from the beginning to rebuilding everything
myself and I knew I was repairing the bezel so I bought a lot of busted stuff for cheap. In that process I got a bunch of stuff that I couldn't have fixed myself, but also a decent selection of parts I used. I actually sent several bezels back and forth to DMT, the lower overlays weren't being offered so I worked with DMT to get them made and provided several of the bezels for patterns. Not sure if I did better than the $1,200 for a restoration, probably would have saved me some time though. I will probably send off one of my 150 mph speedo's for a rebuild, the one I have bounces a little still.

And it turned out freakin awesome. Looks factory.

 

[70dustah]

The search feature is your friend on this!! There is a thread on here about the ammeter to voltmeter conversion on rallye dashes, MAD electrical upgrade, removal of voltage limiter from fuel gauge and installing a solid state external one. DO your homework, do it once, and be done for 40 more years. I also refaced my odometer, had my gauges recalibrated ( redfish ) , replaced all bulbs and sockets, removed and polished lenses with a headlight polishing kit( the one with the powerball worked great) stripped and repainted bezel along with a decal from DMT. Can't stress it enough, search, search, and search more. All of the info is on here from some of our great members.

 

[RedFish]

If you're sending the plastic bezel out for rechrome, you should probably let them do the plastic repairs or at least ask them what adhesive and/or filler products they'll recommend. Some chemicals may react with the chroming process.
I wouldn't attempt to move the ignition switch from column to dash.
For what its worth... I built a right door mirror with long cable remote. I cut a second hole for the ignition switch bezel into my 67 rallye dash for that remote. If you went that route you would cut holes in the right door and the door jamb area but you would already have the hole for the remote.
On/off switch for stereo amplifier or just about anything placed in that switch bezel might be better than attempting to fill the big hole in the sheet metal.

 

[moparmat2000]

The search feature is your friend on this!! There is a thread on here about the ammeter to voltmeter conversion on rallye dashes, MAD electrical upgrade, removal of voltage limiter from fuel gauge and installing a solid state external one. DO your homework, do it once, and be done for 40 more years. I also refaced my odometer, had my gauges recalibrated ( redfish ) , replaced all bulbs and sockets, removed and polished lenses with a headlight polishing kit( the one with the powerball worked great) stripped and repainted bezel along with a decal from DMT. Can't stress it enough, search, search, and search more. All of the info is on here from some of our great members.

I also did the ammeter to voltmeter conversion. I used the guts out of a sun voltmeter gage, and the ammeter gage face and pointer. I cut the volt gage pointer off and glued on the original ammeter pointer. I was able to adjust the potentiometer on the new volt gage with its lighter ammeter pointer needle.

If you go this route, you will have to grind off a spot on your rallye gage housing so the bottom half of the gage doesnt hit and allows full swing of the gage. This is shown shaded in red in pic#3. I also added in a 12V led discharge light because i am running a denso mini alternator, and there is a spot in the back to wire in a discharge/fault light.

How i wired the gage in, is where the positive leg of the gage comes through the back of the housing , i enlarged that hole for a plastic grommet, and some plastic washers to insulate it. On the back side i ran a wire from the 12V+ stud of the gage , and jumpered it to the 12V+ feed lug coming into the cluster at the 12V+ feed going into the fuel gage.

The negative stud off the volt gage i cleaned the gage housing to bare metal so it would ground to the housing.

(Remember the gage housing is negative ground to the dash frame )

 

[moparmat2000]

I shortened the bezel because I actually cut my standard dash frame for the rallye cluster. If you have a rallye dash frame there will be a mounting hole out on the dash you'll have to cover if you shorten the bezel.

As for the gauges, I didn't do too much to the ones I chose, but I bought a handful of "for parts" gauge clusters and dashes and picked the best ones. They're a lot cheaper if the bezels are broken. After that I just cleaned them up and repainted the needles. I installed a digital IVR so the fuel gauge was modified for that. I also converted an ammeter over to a voltmeter but I haven't installed that one yet. The speedometer I disassembled, cleaned, lubricated and reassembled. The bezel was a lot of work, I sanded it down, installed the repair piece to fix the radio cut out and shorten the bezel, sanded more, primed, sanded more, painted, sanded, painted, polished, touched up all the lettering, etc. I removed and polished all the lenses and reassembled it.

I committed from the beginning to rebuilding everything
myself and I knew I was repairing the bezel so I bought a lot of busted stuff for cheap. In that process I got a bunch of stuff that I couldn't have fixed myself, but also a decent selection of parts I used. I actually sent several bezels back and forth to DMT, the lower overlays weren't being offered so I worked with DMT to get them made and provided several of the bezels for patterns. Not sure if I did better than the $1,200 for a restoration, probably would have saved me some time though. I will probably send off one of my 150 mph speedo's for a rebuild, the one I have bounces a little still.

You should look concider for a 68/69 V100 glovebox door. It uses a small pushbutton to open , no plastic surround piece around the knob, and IMHO looks cleaner.

 

[moparmat2000]

Ammeter bypass

 

[thanson_mopar]

I also did the ammeter to voltmeter conversion. I used the guts out of a sun voltmeter gage, and the ammeter gage face and pointer. I cut the volt gage pointer off and glued on the original ammeter pointer. I was able to adjust the potentiometer on the new volt gage with its lighter ammeter pointer needle.

If you go this route, you will have to grind off a spot on your rallye gage housing so the bottom half of the gage doesnt hit and allows full swing of the gage. This is shown shaded in red in pic#3. I also added in a 12V led discharge light because i am running a denso mini alternator, and there is a spot in the back to wire in a discharge/fault light.

How i wired the gage in, is where the positive leg of the gage comes through the back of the housing , i enlarged that hole for a plastic grommet, and some plastic washers to insulate it. On the back side i ran a wire from the 12V+ stud of the gage , and jumpered it to the 12V+ feed lug coming into the cluster at the 12V+ feed going into the fuel gage.

The negative stud off the volt gage i cleaned the gage housing to bare metal so it would ground to the housing.

(Remember the gage housing is negative ground to the dash frame )


View attachment 1714998537

View attachment 1714998538

View attachment 1714998541

Great Idea, I really like the little LED discharge light as well.

 

[thanson_mopar]

If you're sending the plastic bezel out for rechrome, you should probably let them do the plastic repairs or at least ask them what adhesive and/or filler products they'll recommend. Some chemicals may react with the chroming process.
I wouldn't attempt to move the ignition switch from column to dash.
For what its worth... I built a right door mirror with long cable remote. I cut a second hole for the ignition switch bezel into my 67 rallye dash for that remote. If you went that route you would cut holes in the right door and the door jamb area but you would already have the hole for the remote.
On/off switch for stereo amplifier or just about anything placed in that switch bezel might be better than attempting to fill the big hole in the sheet metal.

View attachment 1714998534

After seeing some prices of plastic chroming I may just end up painting. I don't have to be correct since its a custom application anyway.

Good advice, I will just use the hole in the dash for something else. thanks

How much do you charge to calibrate guages?

 

[thanson_mopar]

The search feature is your friend on this!! There is a thread on here about the ammeter to voltmeter conversion on rallye dashes, MAD electrical upgrade, removal of voltage limiter from fuel gauge and installing a solid state external one. DO your homework, do it once, and be done for 40 more years. I also refaced my odometer, had my gauges recalibrated ( redfish ) , replaced all bulbs and sockets, removed and polished lenses with a headlight polishing kit( the one with the powerball worked great) stripped and repainted bezel along with a decal from DMT. Can't stress it enough, search, search, and search more. All of the info is on here from some of our great members.

I did search and found bits and pieces of info but really wanted to consolidate it, will help me keep it all straight and will help others looking to do something similar. Sometimes starting a new thread also brings up new information that wasn't available when old threads were created.

I will look into DMT as well, Thanks

 

[moparmat2000]

Great Idea, I really like the little LED discharge light as well.

If or when doing this on a denso alt. remember the LED is polarity sensitive. The light circuit on the denso works with an ignition hot feed to the light, and the negative side goes to the L terminal.

When alternator is outputting, L terminal is open. If alternator faults, or during ign on start L terminal contact is closed to ground completing light circuit.

I used a #50 machinests drill to make the light hole as small as i could to hide it. Then i used a black sharpie to "paint" the edges of the drill hole. JB weld was used to glue it in. The positive light lead was soldered to the 12V hot wire for the gage. Black goes to L terminal on Alt .

 

[moparmat2000]

Need to make this stuff a sticky

 

[moparmat2000]

After seeing some prices of plastic chroming I may just end up painting. I don't have to be correct since its a custom application anyway.

Good advice, I will just use the hole in the dash for something else. thanks

How much do you charge to calibrate guages?

Just tack weld some thin steel sheet to the back side of the hole, grind flat and bodywork it, or put a pushbutton start?

 

[thanson_mopar]

Just tack weld some thin steel sheet to the back side of the hole, grind flat and bodywork it, or put a pushbutton start?

push button start is a good Idea

 

[72bluNblu]

I also did the ammeter to voltmeter conversion. I used the guts out of a sun voltmeter gage, and the ammeter gage face and pointer. I cut the volt gage pointer off and glued on the original ammeter pointer. I was able to adjust the potentiometer on the new volt gage with its lighter ammeter pointer needle.

If you go this route, you will have to grind off a spot on your rallye gage housing so the bottom half of the gage doesnt hit and allows full swing of the gage. This is shown shaded in red in pic#3. I also added in a 12V led discharge light because i am running a denso mini alternator, and there is a spot in the back to wire in a discharge/fault light.

How i wired the gage in, is where the positive leg of the gage comes through the back of the housing , i enlarged that hole for a plastic grommet, and some plastic washers to insulate it. On the back side i ran a wire from the 12V+ stud of the gage , and jumpered it to the 12V+ feed lug coming into the cluster at the 12V+ feed going into the fuel gage.

The negative stud off the volt gage i cleaned the gage housing to bare metal so it would ground to the housing.

(Remember the gage housing is negative ground to the dash frame )


View attachment 1714998537

View attachment 1714998538

View attachment 1714998541

Nice!

That's what I did also. Summit had that sunpro gauge on clearance awhile back, I bought a couple of them in that style and also in the flipped version for the E-body rallye gauges which have the needle on the other side. Nice work with the discharge light, and good info on trimming the housing. I haven't done the bypass on my Duster yet so although I converted the gauge I haven't installed it yet.

You should look concider for a 68/69 V100 glovebox door. It uses a small pushbutton to open , no plastic surround piece around the knob, and IMHO looks cleaner.

Yeah but then I'd have to buy a glove box door!

 

[moparmat2000]

I bought a 68 V100 smooth door for the dash we are going to do in the 69 cuda. This is perfect. You can find em here on fabo pretty cheap $10-$15. You need the bent wire hasp for it as its different than your 74 hasp. Bolts right up to your 74 hinge. We are probably going to use the 74 dart dash in the 69 cuda with a custom gage setup, and the smooth val 100 glovebox door. Bonus is tonys mopar has a repop lockable button for this.

 

[moparmat2000]

Nice!
Nice work with the discharge light, and good info on trimming the housing. I haven't done the bypass on my Duster yet so although I converted the gauge I haven't installed it

Thanks for the kudos on the discharge light. I thought it was a nice touch

 

[RedFish]

How much do you charge to calibrate guages?

I no longer offer those services. Sorry

 

[thanson_mopar]

I no longer offer those services. Sorry

bummer, Thanks anyway, Is there anyone else that you would personally recomend?

 

[AJ/FormS]

I wanna talk about the 150 speedo. As in what's the point of it? The 120 already has the graduations pretty small, so going an exact speed with the factory cable usually doing it's little dance is always tricky. The 150 makes this even trickier. Once you are in top gear, you can use the tack as a speedo. Besides, it is way cooler to say you buried the tach in top gear than to say you buried the speedo. I mean 3.55s can hit 160 at redline. I took my 150 out, and replaced it with the 120, for more accuracy. I hate speeding tickets.See up here they cost us points on our licensees, and if you get more than 5 of those blasted points, they start to cost money,a lot of money.So I save my score-card for real offenses like imprudents,lol. Yeah, I've had few of those..... Anyway that's my take on the 150 speedo.
While I'm here, I might as well talk about putting a tach in that center spot. I think it's a waste of real estate. The tach is too small and the graduations are too close together, and the factory one is extremely slow. Furthermore, it is in a bad spot. You have to take your eyes off the road to see it, and at 65 mph you are already traveling at 95 ft per second. Do you think it's a good idea to be trying to focus on that lying pos at 95fps? Well I didn't.I installed an 8000rpm, 270*, 4incher onto a bracket that I fabbed to wrap around the dashcap. When I need the tach,I slide it over to front and center. The rest of the time it is off to the right someplace. And as to that vacated center hole, I installed a factory vacuum gauge there. It may not be dead-nuts accurate, but hey who cares; it is still a very useful tool,on account of it's all relative.If it's 5% off in one place, it will be 5% off everywhere. And the 5% is very small, being less than 1 inch at 15 inches.
Yeah so that's my nickel's worth.
I like the key on the dash, but when I really nail a shift, I usually have to go looking in the back seat for my keys! I always hated looking for that column switch in the later As, especially in the dark.
Those factory gauges are notoriously slow to respond.Mine are still in there, cuz I built a reliable engine, and a reliable cooling system. So I never really look at them, and they do look nice. But the factory lighting is so poor that you can hardly see them in the dark.But the only one I need to see is the SpeedO, and I put some really bright bulbs in there,lol; Cuz, you know, I doubt the cop who pulls me over for running 5 kliks over, is gonna buy my story about me not seeing the needles on this old heap!,lol.
OK so I'm over a dime by now,TTYL

 

[moparmat2000]

I wanna talk about the 150 speedo. As in what's the point of it? The 120 already has the graduations pretty small, so going an exact speed with the factory cable usually doing it's little dance is always tricky. The 150 makes this even trickier. Once you are in top gear, you can use the tack as a speedo. Besides, it is way cooler to say you buried the tach in top gear than to say you buried the speedo. I mean 3.55s can hit 160 at redline. I took my 150 out, and replaced it with the 120, for more accuracy. I hate speeding tickets.See up here they cost us points on our licensees, and if you get more than 5 of those blasted points, they start to cost money,a lot of money.So I save my score-card for real offenses like imprudents,lol. Yeah, I've had few of those..... Anyway that's my take on the 150 speedo.
While I'm here, I might as well talk about putting a tach in that center spot. I think it's a waste of real estate. The tach is too small and the graduations are too close together, and the factory one is extremely slow. Furthermore, it is in a bad spot. You have to take your eyes off the road to see it, and at 65 mph you are already traveling at 95 ft per second. Do you think it's a good idea to be trying to focus on that lying pos at 95fps? Well I didn't.I installed an 8000rpm, 270*, 4incher onto a bracket that I fabbed to wrap around the dashcap. When I need the tach,I slide it over to front and center. The rest of the time it is off to the right someplace. And as to that vacated center hole, I installed a factory vacuum gauge there. It may not be dead-nuts accurate, but hey who cares; it is still a very useful tool,on account of it's all relative.If it's 5% off in one place, it will be 5% off everywhere. And the 5% is very small, being less than 1 inch at 15 inches.
Yeah so that's my nickel's worth.
I like the key on the dash, but when I really nail a shift, I usually have to go looking in the back seat for my keys! I always hated looking for that column switch in the later As, especially in the dark.
Those factory gauges are notoriously slow to respond.Mine are still in there, cuz I built a reliable engine, and a reliable cooling system. So I never really look at them, and they do look nice. But the factory lighting is so poor that you can hardly see them in the dark.But the only one I need to see is the SpeedO, and I put some really bright bulbs in there,lol; Cuz, you know, I doubt the cop who pulls me over for running 5 kliks over, is gonna buy my story about me not seeing the needles on this old heap!,lol.
OK so I'm over a dime by now,TTYL

I agree, i am using the vacuum gage, and will be installing a hidden adjustable shift light that lights up the parking brake indicator.