Yup if anyone is interested I swapped a spare set of '98 SE gauges into my '96. If your wondering why its because Ive always liked the look of the '98~'99 gauges better than the ones found on the '95~'97s. Not to mention I was in the mood for a good wiring project for my car. I had to cut and splice about 30 wires to get it work. The gauges work fine in my '96 and all the lights are functional.



Also did a 194 bulb conversion in the process



Dont worry I also calibrated the mileage exactly using a power supply and a function generator to add miles to the gauges. When I got the gauges they were about 68,000 miles, I had to add enough miles to get them to 165,944 so as to match my 96's mileage. Needless to say this thing ran for several weeks at about 145 MPH to get there, but it worked in the end.

"Fastest workbench ever"





If you want to see more pics you can goto to my cardomain site

 

wow very nice, looks clean

 

Very nice! 98-99s do look good.

 

awesome job, new break through for maxima's everywhere . Thanks for always keeping me updated

 

Great job and very nice!

How long dificult was the rewiring job? Any major problems?

I'd love to get a 98-99 cluster...might be time to checkout Ebay.

 

cluster does look nice, gj on the wiring. looks like it was a pain in the butt though.. but well worth it

 

LOL... I've never seen someone go to that much trouble to be honest about their mileage... refreshing

I'm about to turn 60K on mine (real miles, too...hehe)

Great job on the project!

 

nice!

writeup?

 

WOW~! Very very nice.

That's a lot of work for something you'll only notice, but hey, great ingenuity.

 

i'd love to see a writeup on this as well when you have the time to do it.

so it took a couple weeks to go 100k?

 

165,944 -68,000=97944 miles needed added
97944/145=675.47586206896551724137931034483 hours
675.47586206896551724137931034483/24=28.144827586206896551724137931034days
28.144827586206896551724137931034/7=4.0206896551724137931034482758621 weeks

so almost a month... i applaud your electrical skills!

 

Thanks to all that replied. I’ve been thinking about a write up but it’s a lot of wiring work which is not for a lot of Org members. For me it wasn't that hard, it was a relaxing project. Most of the wires are similar with the color coding and swap right over but some are guess work to the unprepared. I took a lot of detailed notes so I know what each wire does and where it goes on both clusters. If I was to give a write up I would have to run it by some Moderators to see if it’s ok. Reason being what's to stop someone shady from swapping gauges and selling their car as a low mileage car. I don't want to have that burden on my head. Of course people can try it on their own now, but im not going to be one to help them commit mileage fraud.

However the trick to adding mileage is easy but you need a function generator capable of making a square wave (and no this doesn't go in reverse, its only one way; I haven't figured out how to make it less). You apply 12 volts to the green wire and hook up the negative to all three ground wires. Then you hook up the function generator to the two wires for the speed sensor input. Basically for 1 MPH you need to use roughly 2.2 Hertz (Hz). So if I was to make it 100 MPH the frequency would have to be at 220 Hz, at 145 MPH it’s at 319 Hz. Also it took more than 4 weeks to get the mileage because I kept shutting this thing off when I would be away for a while and whenever a bad thunderstorm rolled in. Even though it’s running thru a power supply I didn’t want the chance of damaging these sensitive gauges from a lighting strike.

 

i hope the moderators approve as i'd love to do this with my cluster gauge... but i would understand if the moderators or you wouldn't condone this.

 

Joe's the man.....w00t! I remember back in what April when you told me about the swap. I never had doubts, just thought it would be a sweet bragging mod! Good job. Now swap the 99 auto climate control into your 96.

Every time I get into the 96 I love the needles pointing one way, but I dont like the clear needles. Red needles (from say a frontier) on the 98 cluster with a 96 fuel gauge, and gun metal gauge rings would be sweet.

 

Man, do the 'how to'! Don't feel responsible for it when people abuse that info, if they wanna fraud they would simple throw in a new cluster with less mileage from the same year so the only thing you would do is help us getting cool digi-dashes in our 95-96 maxima's! I really would love one!

 

Don't fret over any liability issues or feeling guilty. The odometer on the 3rd gens are EXTREMELY easy to swap out on their own & these would have more to gain from lower mileage.

 

There is no fraud difference when doing this than in people simply swapping a lower-mileage cluster from a 97 into a 95. As a moderator (though not from THIS forum), I would say it woudl be fine to post the write-up.

I even went so far as to re-use my old odometer in my 97 I30 to keep it true when I switched from BFGs to WFGs.

 

I would like to just pay someone to install it on my 95 GLE. Please make a write-up. What is a 194 bulb conversion?

 

that's really cool man, good job!!!!!!!!

 

cant you just go to the dealer and have the reset your mileage? that would save a ton of time.

 

... well i feel u wouldnt get int trouble for milage probs.. cause .. any idiot can swap in a cluster form a car int eh junk yard... and bam it can have less miles.. in my case i found a cluster and waped the internals for the milage... but i mean swapping clusters would mean when u go to do inspeciton they recond miles and it wouldnt match.. so people who car fax can tell... i mean theres alot of ways for people to check legit miles...

so i doubt ull get int toruble for it..
i can really care less .. cause i have the digital guages =) but i knwo alot of the other guys would lvoe the digital guages... specially soem of hte more heavly modded guys with the ECUs and such that arnt compatible with the 98and up models.. with hte digital guages..

P.S.. GREAT WORK BY THE WAY....

Im doing a OEM navigation project and was wondering if you can help me read a wirign diagram and figure out a plug.?

 

you can remove the odometer and place it into the new gauge cluster? I seriously did not want to try this because it was with a 2nd gen digital dash. can anyone give me advice on doing it now. It uses an analog odometer. I would appreciate it, since I also want to keep the mileage of my max true(mileage is a testament to the good engineering that went into my max)

 

I did it this weekend. PM me for details.

 

wow...very nice. Good job on the install! I cant say I would have that much patience (let alone the know-how)....