Aldakoopa

A search didn't really turn up anything, so I figured I'd ask. I'm about to do a digital to analog swap. My car is an '86 automatic and my parts car that I'm getting the analog gauges from is an '85 manual, is there any difference in the speedometer cables or should it work?

Flacster

84-86 are almost the same. I would think it would work.

Aldakoopa

My main concern is the difference in transmissions, but I don't really see why that would require a different speedometer cable. Thanks!

Aldakoopa

On a side note, that's one greasy speedometer cable. I couldn't have gotten my hands any dirtier if I had reached straight into the oil pan.

rogerz

85 manual had the speedo cable running into the dash and connecting into the speedo direct. 86 auto had a speed sensor mounted on the right side of the engine bay which sends an electric signal to the speedo. you might have a problem.

Aldakoopa

Yes, but the speed sensor was for the digital gauges, correct? I'm putting in analog gauges from an 85. Only thing I'm really worried about is the length and how it mounts to the transmission. If it is long enough to go inside the car and hook up to an automatic transmission instead of a manual then it should be fine, but I won't really know until I get into hooking it up. All I managed to accomplish today was removing everything except the speedometer cable from my parts car. I still have to remove everything from my driving car and reattach the analog stuff, so I still have about a full day's work to do to it.

AZ-ZBum

Well you should reread what he wrote and think for a second...Do you think that Nissan included those couple of extra feet of cable necessary to reach the instrument cluster?

Yes. You will need an 84-86 analog speedometer cable.

Aldakoopa

I don't think any of you really understood my question. I realise you have to swap the speedometer cable. I've only read about seven different sets of instructions on how to swap from digital to analog. I just wanted to know if there was a difference between the speedometer cable for the AUTOMATIC or the speedometer cable for the MANUAL transmission.

But, there isn't because I just finished getting it in a half an hour ago.

Aldakoopa

Turns out the analog speedometer cable was so greasy because... yep, you guessed it. The parts car's pinion seal was leaking, so my speedometer just turned a complete 360 degrees until it hit the pin under 0. I had to take the gauges back out and clean them up and clean out the speedometer cable, but now everything works fine. Thanks mostly goes to Zbum's write-ups on how to do this stuff, but I read a few other people's as well to get better acquainted with the task before performing it.