To save what seems like about £500 in Digidashs or nice clocks I'm thinking about fitting the (admittedly shockingly ugly) Sierra dash.

I just want to check something:
As I had the EFI Sierra will my dash only work if the ECU is connected up? Are the dials powered directly off the sensors or do the sensors tell the ECU and then that determines what goes to the clocks?

Basically- will I need to get a carb' Sierra dash or can I use the EFI one and get reasonably full functionality?

Thanks,

James

I dont think the efi has anything at all to do with the dash....... certainly didnt on the granny 2.4 V6.

The speedo would need the lekky sensor on the box and the tacho I think just goes to ignition control box / breaker.

Rest of the lights are just lights - you can wire em as needed.

I thought about using mine, but spent 350 quid instead




If you know someone artistic, you could spray the dials white and re-legend them, if you wanna be different. And im pretty sure you could get some bezels from summat or other to make em look better if needed


atb

steve

As long as it doesn't look like some of the Robin Hood show cars I've seen- badly cut vinyl padding laid over the top with circle cut in it!

Was wondering if a laser (or wire ) cut piece of stainless over it would look nice... or atleast nice-r!

Cheers for the info Steve,

James

i was actually gonna say summat like just cut a hole and cover it with pvc fabric - but decided not to in cas eI upset anyone that had.

anyway - you did it

atb

steve

sierra dashset is independant of the ecu

only 1 that had anything to do with the ecu was the rs500 / 3door cosworth which had the boost guage

oh, and 90 spec ones look a lot nicer than pre90 spec ones and if you can get the sapphire cosworth dashset, then you also get the added bonus of a 170mph speedo - which i have got from my donor car (not that it ever got that fast - they just look nice - but i'm a sierra man at heart. lol)

with a bit of fiddling, most of the guages come out anyway. mine only had fuel, temp and speedo, but was easy to break apart. i bought old guages off ebay anyway, they're only a couple of quid.

sod pissing on £500

Cheers for the info' everyone.

Steve,
If it's done nicely then I don't have a problem- it's just that when you see it and the circle isn't even cut properly it's a bit off- putting if u know what I mean!

Graceland,
Is there only 2 types of dash? Mine's a '89 model but I'm pretty sure I've seen an older style so maybe I have the more modern one?

Joel,

I haven't tried dismantling the unit yet- maybe I'll give that a go! I've started watching items on ebay!

Cheers,

James

I hacksawed the plastic facia off mine so it was flat and screwed it to the back of the dash then just put a piece of perspex in front of it, but then I am a bodger. You could spend more time on it and make it look like round gauges quite easily though. I didn't bother with a fuel gauge but it's still there reads empty so it would worry someone who didn't know. It could be an anti theft device for sva purposes.

yours, Pete.

theres about 8 types james

sierra cosworth (the origional 3 door with the boost guage above the rev counter) and 170mph speedo

Sierra base - just speedo and fuel/temp
130mph speedo on the early 1.3 and early 1.6 models

sierra not so base - as base, but a clock where a rev counter would be - 150mph speedo

normal sierra - rev counter, temp, fuel, speed - 150 mph speedo

sapphire cosworth - 170mph variant speedo

V6 sierra - rev counter changed to allow 6 cylynder readings 150 mph speedo

then the normal sierra, sapphire cosworth and V6 ones were updated for the 90 spec dashboard and this involved removing the numbers on the fuel guage, neatening the temp guage, making the distance between zero revs and 1000 revs smaller and removing the needle rest pin and the speedo was more or less the same bar some slight printing differances and the 130mph speedo was phased out when the mk2 sierra was launched and all sierras, apart from the cosworth variety, had 150mph speedo's

and then you have the left hand driver variants with kilometers for the speedo

just a few differant ones

[Edited on 25/2/04 by Graceland]