Swapping gauge cluster and odometer module

I recently picked up a white face dash cluster to replace my original black face and knew that the new cluster had 64k less miles than mine. I searched quite a bit about mileage correction and found many threads talking about taking it to the dealer, de-soldiering chips, sending the cluster in to have the mileage reset etc…
After plugging in the cluster to make sure it worked I started looking at the original to find the e-prom chip I read about swapping and very quickly realized that the odometer is a separate module and takes about 5 minutes to change.
If this has been posted before I sure couldn’t find it and maybe this helps someone doing this swap. Pics are self explanatory.

 

Need a “pop my collar” pic after that. Bad ass.

 

I recently bought a white faced gauge for my 2000 but my original odometer is the electric/mechanical style. The digital odometer reads 350,000 miles but the original odometer has 245,000 miles. Do you know if the dial type will fit in the same way or is there someone that you can recommend that can correct the digital odometer to read 245,000 miles?

 

If you’re original cluster is the black face without tachometer then I doubt the odometer will transfer, but I’ve never had a non-tach cluster apart so maybe?
As far as changing the mileage on the digital cluster there is probably a way to do it but I could not find any definitive answer to that question.

 

I did the exact opposite from this swap, as in I wanted to go back to black face gauges. I was planning on adding a lot of gauges, and I’ve never been a very big fan of the white face gauges on a truck, and I’m particular on gauges that match each other. I purchased an older cluster, and installed it in my 04. I was worried about the backlighting of the cluster and odometer module as well, turns out it’s all illuminated by your cluster bulbs, so you can change to any color that you like.

There was another thread that the OP was trying to replace the older mechanical style odometer with another one of the same type, because it would stop and start counting again. Their main question was if it was a full mechanical cable driven cluster or not, it was electrical. That truck was an 02 and I wondered if they could have actually done this same swap that you are asking about. I’m not really sure if anyone else has done this. If you have the cluster, swap it out, leave the dash apart, just plug the cluster with the tach in. Test drive the truck and see if everything works and the odometer counts. Theoretically it should be plug and play, but you might want to verify that the pin out on the connectors are the same between your truck and the year model of the tach cluster.
If the odometer counts, then you’re only problem is correcting the odometer. I personally would check eBay high and low for another cluster showing mileage close to your original mileage. Buy the cluster just for the odometer module, if the seller won’t sell it separate. You can always sell the extra cluster after you get your miles corrected. Otherwise you might have trouble trying to get any speedometer shop to “roll back” that digital cluster from 350k to 245k, as it would take a lot of convincing that you were not trying to commit mileage fraud.
Let us know if it works!

 

Is there a way on those analog odometers to correct mileage? I’m about to swap gauge clusters and would like to correct mileage on the analog odometer

 

I honestly don’t know. I’m sure there is a way to do it, but it may have to be completely disassembled to do so. Lots of things like this were assembled in a way that will make disassembling hard, if not impossible. For example plastic could be molded around a component when manufactured instead of using fasteners. This would require cutting the plastic components, then welding them back together. I’m sure a speedometer shop would be able to do this, but again it may require convincing that you are trying to keep your original mileage intact and not committing fraud.
On the other hand it could be quite easy to add mileage to the odometer. It’s electrically driven, so theoretically there could be a way to apply voltage to the motor in order for it to count forward. How much voltage, and duty cycle would be the main question there.
I’ve replaced hour meters on equipment before. The way I did that and kept the original hours was to straight wire the hour meter to count 24 hours a day. Do the math and mark a calendar for when you will go back and stop the meter from counting. In the meantime, keep track of hours used on the machine and add those in as well. As long as it doesn’t have an ungodly amount of hours on it, it’s fairly easy to do, you just have to wait…..