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Gumby - Dragon Green 521


HOGIE

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My fuel and temp gauges have been working intermittently for quite some time and it was time to check out the voltage regulator on the back of the cluster. Also I decided to rebuild my cluster, that I've been putting off for a while because of this old repair that I attempted to redo that looked like shit

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I had a second cluster that I got from a MT member a while back that had a good circuit board. I planned on just swapping out my gauges, plastic and glass face panels onto the good back panel with circuit board donor but I found a few interesting differences and one that made my job a little harder.

 

First I noticed that the speedometer gear housing from the donor cluster, 520, was heavy cast iron with brass gears

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And my 521 speedometer gear housing is zinc plates stamped steel with plastic gears(poor picture). Interesting.

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But here is the problem. The next picture is the dish in the rear panel on my 521 cluster with the speedo mounting hole at around 45 and 205 degrees to the speedo cable hole. And then the picture of the donor 520 rear cluster panel has those speedo holes at mounting holes at 0 and 180 degrees.

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No biggy. Make a template, mark the hole positions, drill some holes and finish putting it back together.

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I used the voltage regulator that looked the cleanest and screwed it down. I think it was the one off the donor cluster. If it doesn't work it's supper east to swap out. I'm going to order some LED dash bulbs to brighten up the lights but done for now

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There is a local guy that has similar issues as this, i'll see if I can drag him over to Al's sometime once his truck is running good.

If it's as easy as those have told me fixing the intermittent gauge issue is as easy as 1 screw as cleaning the connections. Mine should be all good but won't know until driving in the morning.

 

Yes bring more Datsun people over for the next get together.

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  • 5 weeks later...

If I had a set of 2wd hardbody drop spindles I would be installing those but I don't yet.

 

I resurrected and got it on the road last June and have been driving it almost every day so I've had time to realize my kingpins are pretty worn out and I'm pretty tired of tweeking the front drum brakes so it doesn't pull to the left or right when hard braking. Also I'm planning on a motor upgrade and the front suspension and brake swap will give me better handling and braking capability to go along with the increased power.

 

Like I said before I drive this truck every day so I still need to get a bunch of things together so I can slap in the spring hangers, UCA, and LCA then figure out what spring/shock combo I'm going to run and then while I'm waiting for those I can install dual brake master cylinder, proportioning valve and new front and rear brake lines. Then when the coilovers show up I can just slap them in adjust and go.

 

Also thinking of doing the motor swap while it's down. Hopefully all that doesn't take too long if I get everything together so I'm not taking the bus to work for too long.

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  • 7 months later...

Now it’s sitting on these wheels with hardbody spindles

 

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I’ve also freshened up the steering box and am working on getting all the steering linkage worked out

 

Using 521 steering box and idle arm, 620 tie rod ends and center link(because that’s what I have) and d21 outer tie rod setup

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  • 4 months later...

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