LS SWAP NOVA AFTERMARKET GAUGES INSTALL 

Thanks for the compliment. Still have a few bugs to work out but she’s getting closer and closer every day now. 👍🏻

thanks brother.👍

It’ll most likely be in the next few days because we’re gonna need the trailer for the Nova so I’ll probably do the reveal when we take the new project off the tailer. 😉

I’ve actually used that kit! The oil pressure adapter in that kit works for sure but the coolant temp adapter only works with auto meters included shallow mount sender. If you’re doing autometer gauges then it’s the way to go but if not you need to made sure the temp gauge you’re using is the same ohm rating as the autometer sender (I haven’t had one yet that was😔).

thank you sir. After we get the exhaust this weekend it'll be out cruising so i can tune it.👍

Do basic bolt one and nitrous brother. Headers, exhaust, intake, and tune work well on hemis from what I hear. Then throw the juice at it. 👍🏻

Thanks Nick! I’m happy with it overall but there’s a few things I wish we would have gotten a bit more precise.

If I get off work in time tomorrow then I may go over there to Rays to get it off the trailer and do a little video. 😉

@@BadLuckGarage Thats awesome brother bet you both are excited to see her done and take it for a spin great job on the build brother

Yea I can’t wait. We still need to get a limited slip for the rear and give it a few hundred break in miles but once the exhaust is on it’s definitely gonna get some seat time. 👍🏻

@@BadLuckGarage Im sure you cant🤯 lol and that rearend will be a cool video too watch and get some wet-ass from driving it lol

😅

Yes that’s exactly how it’s set up. Only I prefer to drill and tap the passenger head instead of using adapter that stick out and can be broken as mentioned in the video. The oem sensors and engine harness setup was done in a separate video in the DRNova playlist. This video was dedicated to the gauges only.

FYI Classic Instruments makes a 12mm Temp sender that will fit the stock thread on the LS head. SN12MM is the number. It’s on Summit and Speedway for sale.

Thanks brother. Hey I’m about to hit you up on messenger. Do you know how to tell the difference in 4L80e from 99-2003 from one from 2004-up without dropping the pan?

@@BadLuckGarage the valley cover bolts are bigger on the 04-up I think the knock sensors moved to the side of the block also

No brother I’m talking about the 4L80e, not the LS engines. The main harness connector is leaking transmission fluid so I need to replace the internal harness and plug assembly but there are two different harnesses. One for a 99-03 and one for a 2004-up. I’m not sure what this transmission originally came from so I’m trying to figure out which harness to order so I don’t have to drain it and pull the pan till I have the new harness.

The only difference I can find is the 04-up use the large plug on the neutral safety switch(which I’m not using). But I fail to see how that would effect the internal harness.

@@BadLuckGarage sorry, reading fail on my part. I know they list different bulkhead connectors, but the pinout is the same and I've never been able to figure out what the reason for the year break is, I've used them interchangeably.

Thanks brother. Not as nice as your badass Dakota digitals, but they’ll do. 👍🏻

Bad Luck Garage at a third of the cost they look awesome!! I would use them!

I really do appreciate that brother. Just so you know, I actually went back and binge watched most of your Nova videos a few weeks ago to demotivate myself with The DRNOVA. 👍🏻 I love the color of yours. My first car that I was old enough to drive was a 73 olds omega and it was that same green color when I got it. Ray, my dad, and myself repainted it when I was 15 but the interior stayed the original green color. Regretfully I only have one picture of that car and it was after I totaled it. 😢

That was supposed to say “re-motivate”, not “demotivate”. Lol

@@BadLuckGarage thats awesome it makes me feel good :) I wish I had the ease of a phone camera back in the day so I could have pics of plenty of my cars but some to the early ones I don't have much :/ My Nova now is a blend of two of my old cars... My second car ever was a 76 nova that was lime green that I drove my senior year, then a year or so after high school I had a red 69 nova so this one now is a mix between the two. Reliving my youth :) But like those and many others I regret getting rid of them!

Yes the smaller gauges appear to be a bit brighter than the larger gauges. This issue could probably be fixed by wiring a resistor into the light feed to the smaller gauges to dim them a bit, but it’s really not that big of a deal so we haven’t done anything about it. The difference is more dramatic on camera than in person.

They're at the exact same angle as the factory speedo was. Unless you're driving with your head against the roof, theres no need to angle them,lol.

Originally I had all the 12 V ignition wires Daisy chain together. But I ended up having to run just the voltameter on its own separate lead to get it to read correctly.

The only gauges you could possibly wire straight to the pcm would be the tach and the speedo IF you’re using an electric speedo. The rest require sending units. All this was explained in the video. I would suggest watching it again.

signal and high beams - Use your vehicles original wiring check engine light- 12v ignition to light, grounds through appropriate pin in the pcm. You will need to refer to the pin-out for whatever pcm you used for your swap. Or if you bought a premade LS swap wire harness the wire will already be there and labeled.

I don’t remember exactly. It’s been a few years, but I would recommend skipping the sheet metal and just buying a piece of black abs on eBay to make the panel. It ends looking a lot nicer and the finish is going to be more durable. I’ve actually had a piece sitting here for almost 2 years now waiting to redo the dash in the DR Nova but Ray won’t stop driving it long enough for me to redo it. Lol

@Bad Luck Garage I thought about that... I noticed Walmart had some black foam core I'd say 1/4" thick... It's pretty stiff, but not as stiff as ABS would be... I bet it would still work though.... Yours did look good.... Thinking about getting a 3D printer.. found one that prints about 22"X22" cubed. I have a design in mind . I've done computer graphics before for years, but it depends on the program... Less than a grand..... (780.00??).... Once I made a finished prototype I would be happy with I could stack them a dozen high and snap them apart like model car parts... sell them for a good price.... 395.00 each..... Everyone wants an awesome New part lol..... I'd incorporate rivets for more money and a few other changes and add 150.00 to price... The style I'd implicate would be like steampunk industrial design.... I could make the built in bezels on the large guages aim towards the driver at an angle... All kinds of possibilities brothebrother..... lol... I just gotta do it.....it..... I'm an Artist... helps, huh...

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FS7aRfYkFAQ.htmlsi=x4StwHJtdil7Ovfz

Great!

You can use whichever head you want but you’re gonna have to have the temp sensor in the other one and the wire harness is generally set up to have it in the drivers head so it really doesn’t make sense to swap it to the other head.

The harness end in the car is a combination of factory wires, wires from the psi harness, and new wires that I ran from the new oil pressure and water temp sending units. I just pinned them all into two connectors to make everything nice and neat. On my turbo C10, I just used mail spade connectors in the car and female connectors for the gauge cluster. I went fancy with some deutsch connectors here because a subscriber sent them to me.

@@BadLuckGarage Wow, that's pretty sweet! Great approach. Thanks for the reply!

@@BadLuckGarage Hey bud, i have the same gauges and am installing them on a 70 Nova LS swap myself and yours turned out awesome. Im probably beating a dead cat with this question but.. you had two connectors. how did you separate them? like, why did you use a 10 pin and a 6 pin separately? and what was in each? Sorry, just trying to wire mine just like yours! Thanks in advance.

I just used the connectors I had on hand. I believe a ten pin connectors was the largest I had but I needed 11 connections. So just to make it seem right in my head, I used a 3 pin connector for the 12v constant, 12v switched, and the ground. Then I put all the others in the 10 pin connector. So it separated the power and ground. Or maybe it was that I had a 12 pin connector and needed 13. I can’t remember now but either way I just remember I was one pin short so I decided to separate the “powers” to their own connector. The point is, if you get one connector that has enough pins then one is all you need. I was using parts that were sent to my by a subscriber to save a few bucks so I had to use two seperate connectors. Hope that makes sense.

@@BadLuckGarage lol.. ok, it makes sense. Thank you for the quick response!! Im about to place my ebay order for some.

Because the oil pressure sending unit and most of the coolant temp sending units on an LS engine arent made to work with gauges, they send a 0-5v signal to the pcm and the BCM then controls those gauges in factory applications. The speedometer in this car is also cable driven and would require a vss to cable converter that costs more than I have in all these gauges put together just to run the factory speedometer, and this car didn’t have a factory tach or oil pressure gauge to begin with. This was the cheapest way to get nice modern looking and accurate gauges in the car.

Why would I need a gps signal? Everybody who paid attention the the video knows nothing on this car uses gps. 🤣

Your BP Harness should have a wire labeled “VSS” or “speedometer”. You will connect that wire to the speedometer. The C2 speedometer reads a 16,000ppm signal if I remember correctly, so you need to change the VSS Output signal in your tune to 16,000ppm to be accurate with the C2 speedometer. After you do this then any changes you make to your tune for tire size or gear ratio changes will accurately change your speedometer settings. Alternatively you can just follow the instructions that came with the C2 gauges to calibrate the speedometer with the calibration button. I prefer to adjust the tune and not even install the button.

Just measure the inside area of your factory cluster like we did in the video brother. I would suggest using a sheet of black plastic instead of sheet metal though. If you check out the video in the Chaos Theory Camaro playlist where I mounted the Holley Prodash. There’s a search link for black sheets of plastic like I used in that video. I may even end up redoing the DR Novas dahs with it down the road. 👍🏻

Yea you absolutely could. I thought the same thing but there’s no adjustable output on the tach so you would need to use some sort of adjustable rpm switch. The same could be done with the speedometer. The other gauges don’t have dual illumination.

I covered that in the video brother. I can calibrate it in the tune as long as I know what PPM the speedometer is. I never use the calibrate button with aftermarket gauges because of you disconnect the battery then you have to do it all over again . I prefer to just adjust the settings in the tune and be done with it. 😉 Of course if you don’t have HPTuners or a similiar tuner to properly set up your tune then you’re kinda stuck dealing with the speedometers calibrate feature.

I know that you said that you will change the ecu tune for the the gauge but I don't think that it will read correctly unless you adjust the pulses per mile to live with the Nova's gearing and tire diameter. Curious to see the outcome.

All that is adjustable in the tune brother. This particular speedometer works off a 16,000ppm signal(just called them this morning). All you have to do is set the ppm output to 16,000 in the tune. Then you can just adjust for gear ratio and tire size in the tune as you would for a stock vehicle. This is the method I always use and is the most reliable and pain free way to ensure accuracy. 👍🏻 This method will work with any electronic speedometer wether it’s an oem style speedo in a late model swap or an aftermarket speedo such as I’m using here. As long as you know the ppm of the speedometer, you can adjust the factory pcm to match and your golden.

Nope. Everything’s still working fine 4 years later.

Thanks brother. Check engine light is a ground signal from pcm. So you send switched ignition power to one side of the light and the pcm wire to the other side. The pcm will ground the circuit to turn the light on.

@@BadLuckGarage do u know the name of that wire/ground signal like if I look up my pcm

On most truck harnesses it will be PIN 46 but you should always check the wiring diagram for your specific vehicle. It should be labeled as “MIL LIGHT” or “MIL CONTROL”.

@@BadLuckGarage thanks man that will help me a lot down the road

No problem man. 👍🏻

And I say again....thanks for sending them! Love these things!!!

@@BadLuckGarage I think I know what's wrong with the volt gauge it's the position you've got it on the dashboard top left right if so there must be something wrong with the top left hole on all gauge panels my water temp sensor quit top left hole LOL just the other day was working fine and now nothing checked all the powers on the wires even check the wires coming from the sensor everything seems to be testing good but not reading anyting

Lol. Yea brother I think the gauge is just bad. If I check voltage at the back of the gauge with a multimeter it’s correct but the gauge itself isn’t reading what the multimeter it reading.

@@BadLuckGarage LOL yeah I'm not sure mine just quit to I was just blaming it on the left top hole

Working great. Drove it back from the rearend guy a couple hours ago.

Sorry brother. I don’t really do outside work. I make videos showing people how to do things and put links for the parts needed in the video descriptions. This is a Do It Yourself channel. 👍🏻

@@BadLuckGarage what did you use to hold the gauges? Cardboard?

@@infamousnova 10:03

@@BadLuckGarage The consistency, no one is more consistent than you 🤣. I just knew a time stamp was coming lol

@@BadLuckGarage 22 gauge?

Hell if I can do it so can you! Just need some sheetmetal shears and some holesaws brother. 👍🏻

Bad Luck Garage Oh yea!! Looks simple. Did you figure out the volt meter?

I think so. I believe the wire I used for switched ignition to power the gauges was actually the old battery warning wire and that the voltage is varying by alternator load which is totally wrong. I just need to clip that wire and is a switched 12v wire that doesn’t vary the voltage.

Bad Luck Garage Heck yea!! Good deal. I’m fixing to buy them gauges. What gauge was that sheet metal? I was thinking of using aluminum what’s your thoughts.

It’s actua a piece of stainless Ray brought over and I honestly have no clue about the thickness. I would have preferred to use some 1/8 aluminum but that would require a bandsaw to cut it and I don’t have one. Also you may notice there’s a slight gap on one side. That’s because when he took measurements he didn’t take into account that the metal would actually have to curve a bit to fit. So when you lay it in flat it fits perfect, but once it’s screwed down to contour to the shape of the original trim it created a small gap on the side.