SubZero350
To boost or not to boost
- Joined
- May 26, 2001
If you are not familiar with the 87 Buick Park Avenue digital cluster, I offer a short description:
It sports a vacuum florecent display manufactured by General Instrument which is about the same size as a typical GN's speedo cluster minus boost and rpm led gauges. This does not include the warning "dummy" lights that flank the display which are not a part of circuit breadboard.
It offers a 199mph capible speedo, trip odometer, 100,000+ readible odometer, hi-res gas gauge, and 6000 rpm tach which can be cycled to read coolant temp, oil pressure, and battery voltage. This cluster uses stock GM temp and oil pressure senders.
There are 4- on-board pushbuttons, two on either sides of the display that enable you to cycle the fuel gauge showing e-f or e-1/4 (hi res); english - metric; gage selection; and trip reset.
In addition, this display has lights on, left and right turn, hi-beam, low fuel, seat belt, and cruise indicators, as well as a gear selection indicator that uses a hi resolution park/neutral gear position switch and module to highlight what gear selection you are currently in.
This is a very extensive installation that requires soldering to micro tracks and reverse engineering the park ave. cluster. It took me and my two friends about 5 hours to complete this task. The installation involved carving out a lot of the t's stock cluster carcus in order to make room for just the guts of the digital park ave unit. The front plexiglas cover was retained from the park ave but the sides were cut off right at the pushbutton switches on both sides. The park ave's cluster breadboard is approx 10" wide and the distance between the t's warning light bezels is about 9 7/8" so it is very tight and notching is required.
To make a long story short, it is in, looks more factory than the factory atari cluster and there are some bugs.
The Park Ave cluster requires a 4000 pulse per mile (PPM) vehicle speed sensor (VSS) input. The stock turbo buick cars are only equipped with a 2000 PPM VSS system that runs off a hall-effect optical sensor mounted to the speedo cable behind the cluster.
Two things can be done to get around this. The first (our temporary fix) was to leave the optical pickup unit on the speedo cable and shoved it back behind the cluster so the rotating vane would not come in contact with anything and installed an AutoTrans universal recalibrator VSS interceptor between the park ave vss input and the 2000 ppm vss output wire to the ecm. The other thing that can be done (preferred) would be to remove the cable altogether and install a VSS sensor on the transmission like the one used on the TTA's and then wire in the yellow VSS buffer box that has both 4000ppm and 2000ppm outputs. We will perform this second mod within the next couple of weeks because the first setup is jumpy and sensitive at speeds below 20 mph.
The other issue is the fuel gauge, although my friend tells me that his car has had an issue with the fuel sender since before this swap. It works but is slow to respond, changes when the fuel pump is running, and is inaccurate. It does, however, register an empty tank correctly. I will check into the fuel level sender compatibility and post the results at a later date. The worst case senario would be we will have to install the sender from the park ave into the t's tank.
Other than that, the VSS, TACH, and TEMP are right on with the ecm's scan data. Oil pressure reads on the park ave. cluster from L to H using dots segmenting the graph. We used an 80 PSI GM sender making each dot is worth 20 psi. Any other sender can be used with different readings; for ex: a 60 psi sender will make each dot worth 15 psi, a 120 psi sender (newer 3800 series II bonnevilles) will make each dot worth 30 psi.
I will get some digital pics put up on my website as soon as I get them taken. My friend hopes to be at the nat's next year to show off this engenious use of alternative GM parts. In my opinion, it looks great and it is something I plan to do when I get a turbo buick.
The only downfall of this cluster is that the tach, temp, volts, and oil pressure info cannot be displayed simaltaniously. You have to cycle thru them using the gage button. But at least they are available at a glance, and the speedo will read to 199mph (even tho i doubt that car will go that fast).
It sports a vacuum florecent display manufactured by General Instrument which is about the same size as a typical GN's speedo cluster minus boost and rpm led gauges. This does not include the warning "dummy" lights that flank the display which are not a part of circuit breadboard.
It offers a 199mph capible speedo, trip odometer, 100,000+ readible odometer, hi-res gas gauge, and 6000 rpm tach which can be cycled to read coolant temp, oil pressure, and battery voltage. This cluster uses stock GM temp and oil pressure senders.
There are 4- on-board pushbuttons, two on either sides of the display that enable you to cycle the fuel gauge showing e-f or e-1/4 (hi res); english - metric; gage selection; and trip reset.
In addition, this display has lights on, left and right turn, hi-beam, low fuel, seat belt, and cruise indicators, as well as a gear selection indicator that uses a hi resolution park/neutral gear position switch and module to highlight what gear selection you are currently in.
This is a very extensive installation that requires soldering to micro tracks and reverse engineering the park ave. cluster. It took me and my two friends about 5 hours to complete this task. The installation involved carving out a lot of the t's stock cluster carcus in order to make room for just the guts of the digital park ave unit. The front plexiglas cover was retained from the park ave but the sides were cut off right at the pushbutton switches on both sides. The park ave's cluster breadboard is approx 10" wide and the distance between the t's warning light bezels is about 9 7/8" so it is very tight and notching is required.
To make a long story short, it is in, looks more factory than the factory atari cluster and there are some bugs.
The Park Ave cluster requires a 4000 pulse per mile (PPM) vehicle speed sensor (VSS) input. The stock turbo buick cars are only equipped with a 2000 PPM VSS system that runs off a hall-effect optical sensor mounted to the speedo cable behind the cluster.
Two things can be done to get around this. The first (our temporary fix) was to leave the optical pickup unit on the speedo cable and shoved it back behind the cluster so the rotating vane would not come in contact with anything and installed an AutoTrans universal recalibrator VSS interceptor between the park ave vss input and the 2000 ppm vss output wire to the ecm. The other thing that can be done (preferred) would be to remove the cable altogether and install a VSS sensor on the transmission like the one used on the TTA's and then wire in the yellow VSS buffer box that has both 4000ppm and 2000ppm outputs. We will perform this second mod within the next couple of weeks because the first setup is jumpy and sensitive at speeds below 20 mph.
The other issue is the fuel gauge, although my friend tells me that his car has had an issue with the fuel sender since before this swap. It works but is slow to respond, changes when the fuel pump is running, and is inaccurate. It does, however, register an empty tank correctly. I will check into the fuel level sender compatibility and post the results at a later date. The worst case senario would be we will have to install the sender from the park ave into the t's tank.
Other than that, the VSS, TACH, and TEMP are right on with the ecm's scan data. Oil pressure reads on the park ave. cluster from L to H using dots segmenting the graph. We used an 80 PSI GM sender making each dot is worth 20 psi. Any other sender can be used with different readings; for ex: a 60 psi sender will make each dot worth 15 psi, a 120 psi sender (newer 3800 series II bonnevilles) will make each dot worth 30 psi.
I will get some digital pics put up on my website as soon as I get them taken. My friend hopes to be at the nat's next year to show off this engenious use of alternative GM parts. In my opinion, it looks great and it is something I plan to do when I get a turbo buick.
The only downfall of this cluster is that the tach, temp, volts, and oil pressure info cannot be displayed simaltaniously. You have to cycle thru them using the gage button. But at least they are available at a glance, and the speedo will read to 199mph (even tho i doubt that car will go that fast).
