1974 Chevy C10 Covans Classic Dashboard Replacement - Old Meets New

For the most part the installation is plug-and-play; however, there is a bit of splicing, as you'll see. To begin the wiring process, first the lights of each gauge must be inserted into the gauge housing. The gauges also come with red and green lightbulb covers for those after a custom look.

Jason then joined all of the lead and ground wires together.

Another option available is to order either manual or electric gauges. For the '74 we ordered a combination of both, due to the nature of the truck. (The speedo and oil pressure are the only manual gauges in this setup.) To continue on with the wiring, all of the electric gauges were plugged in.

Like we said before, the installation is mostly plug-and-play, but there is a minimal amount of wiring required in the install. To make the wiring part as simple as possible, Covan's uses American Autowire harnesses. A big plus is the fact that each wire is individually labeled for easy routing.

The first step is to follow the provided directions, and slide the correct wires into the terminals of the harness plugs.

Next, Jason moved into the cab. The provided harness doesn't plug into the factory harness; instead the two harnesses must be spliced together. Fear not CCT readers, for once again, Covan's has made this process rather simple. For starters, they provide an index sheet (shown in picture), which labels what each wire on the factory harness is, based on its color and terminal number on the factory harness. Secondly, the American Autowire harness uses the same color wires, in correlation to their function as the factory harness does.

One-by-one Jason cut the wires free from the factory harness...

...and spliced them together with the new harness provided.

With all of the wiring finished, everything was plugged in. Also at this time, the oil pressure line and speedo cable were secured.

The unit installs just like the factory unit. Simply place the insert inside the dash housing and secure it to the stock mounting hole locations with the same screws used on the factory setup.

And that's that, a new dash cluster that brings some spice and edge to the look of the dash.