BFM in Gen 2 Project - Completed!

[pleaidestar]

Whoa...that's attracting, I suddenly feel like a moth.

Very nice Grimm, pondering and soon lurking..was going to try leds or just brighten some lights up..but

[Grimmrican]

Yea I was planning on making my own BFM just for hahas and see how they turn out. My idea was to take apart the odometer even the faces. On the rear side of the face sand the green off of It. Do the same with all the other faces. Put it all together and run LEDs. Then tint the inside of the glass and put it all together and see how it comes out.

But instead I dished out some cash lol

[pleaidestar]

You made the right call, that looks pretty slick. My only real issue with the guages and lighting in the cab is that it looks like they used old technology from the late 80's. I am surprised that everything lights up on the hvac control and the gear selector. Just about everyone has darkness in their consoles.

I have access to a 2004 outback being parted out, what would I need to get from it to make that work? I scrolled through the thread that includes your mod but electrical parts and wiring are like reading Chinese to me...I'm just a dumb and dirty ironworker.

[Barbbachello]

So far im thinking ill need the female connectors on the gen 2 cluster, the male connectors on the BFM, a BFM :P and possibly a gen 3 cluster shroud to get it to fit nicely

[rkrenicki]

Unfortunately... The gen2 does not have "connectors" on the cluster. The connectors on the harness are pressed against the flexible PCB on the back of the cluster (except for the Airbag and/or Speedometer wires).

This really just means that you will need to cut off the connectors that are in place, and splice on the 3rd gen connectors in their place.

[Barbbachello]

That does throw a spanner in the works. Back to the drawing board

[rkrenicki]

That does throw a spanner in the works. Back to the drawing board

To better illustrate what I am talking about, this is a picture of a USDM 1995/1996 cluster from the rear. The flexible circuit board bends into the "connectors" around the perimeter and forms the contacts.



There is also either 1 or 2 standard connectors in the middle.. one is for the speedometer (present on all 2nd gen years and is on the right), and one for the Airbag light (only on the 1995/1996 and is on the left of this picture)

[Muse]

What does the third-gen look like from the back?

[Grimmrican]

I'm sorry I have to say this, but

It looks like UR mom from begind XD

I'm sure Krenicki has pix in his pc somewhere

[rkrenicki]

The BFM is a bit different from the non-BFM. Oddly, I did not have any pictures left on my photobucket of either..

This is the back of a BFM:


This is the back of a non-BFM:


Dimensionally, they are the same. The BFM has a metal box on the rear that houses the Cold Cathode Fluorescent Light inverter for the backlight. Otherwise the main difference physically is that the BFM has its connectors facing the front of the car, and the non-BFM has them facing up. The USDM clusters are the same as the JDM non-BFM, at least physically.. not electrically.

[Barbbachello]

I thought it time to update this. Thanks to rkrenickis pinout and his own work in his gen 2 I finally have mine up and running to some degree. This 100% can be done but its reasonably involved so not to be undertaken lightly. As rkrenicki said I'm hesitant to post a DIY but am more than happy to help people do it. So far I have a speedo, tacho, fuel guage, check engine, alternator and oil light. I am no where near finished though. Still have to add in the temp dial and the rest of the indicator lights and then make it look neat. By removing the top and side mounts as well as the black shroudy thing around the cluster its able to fit. The tinted cover can then go back on and actually looks pretty good. Will most likely be leaving the cluster as is and hacking up the dash shroud to hide everything

Check engine cos pre speedo wiring that I did today

[eekay]

Awesome! I've had my BFM cluster for like 2 years now and I haven't had any time to dig into getting it working. I'm glad to see someone else is going for this. I'd love to see what work it entailed. Any help on the wiring would be great!

[Barbbachello]

I have actually finished this now. Heres a copied post from another forum
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I thought it time to post what ive done, how ive done it, what i needed and who has helped. Ill make this section into a guide, not a DIY. If youre game enough to do this you should hopefully know what you're doing and what to do if things go pear shaped. I am more than happy to help anyone wanting to convert their gen 3 or their gen 2 to the best of my abilities. Enjoy

To get the actual thing in there I removed the tinted cover, and the black piece beneath it. Then i cut off the 2 white tabs on the side and the one on the top. To get it into the actual car I highly suggest removing the steering wheel. It makes things 10x easier to get in and out which you will be doing a lot of. Once the guts of the cluster is in there there are 2 routes you could take. You could do what I did and removed part of the plastic supports behind the cluster to make space for the CCFL inverter (big silver box on the back) as well as taking off some of the shroud or you could just remove a lot of shroud. The tinted cover can simply be placed over the gauges and looks perfectly fine once the shroud is on.


Section of support removed

Amount taken off shroud


Wiring (speedo section later)
This is probably the easiest part. First thing is to identify what revision cluster you have. You can either do it via the serial number on the bottom or via how many pins the C plug has. A-C has 14 and D-E has 18.
Onces that is identified youll need a pinout for the gen 2. I found the FSM to be accurate about 80%. I also had a Haynes service manual on hand which was 100% accurate but only has the core functions like dials and warning lights. No indicators or high beams etc. By connection power to pins A8 A9 and grounding A18 and B7 the cluster will turn on and do its light show. Most of the lights work via a switched ground with the exception of at least the indicators which used switched 12v from the stalk. Give the cluster power and then match function to function from the cars harness. I used about 15cm of wire to splice/tap into the cars harness rather than cutting the plugs off. Meant i could put the gen 2 cluster back in to get to work while working on it etc. I will probably replace the gen 2 plugs with the bfm plugs when I do my conversion

The speedo.
The gen 2 is weird with its speedo. The cluster powers the speed sensor and then takes in the signal where it shows it on the cluster then outputs it to the ECU. Thank fully some clever japanese people figured out how the board works and its somewhat straight forward. Remove the speedo board from a gen 2 cluster, preferably one with the same style plug. There are at least 2 types. A big chunky 3 pin and a 5 pin one. The 5 pin still uses the 3 wires but i think the boards are different. The black and white wires are the speedo signal and the yellow/other wire is the power.

With the plug facing away the 3 holes furthest away are the ones you need to work with. I used one of the screws that hold the board to the dial and some ring termnials to make the connections. To hold the screws in the chook poo'd it with solder and it seems to be good. The bottom left wire goes to the ECU and the new cluster. The top left goes to 12v (switched) and the top right gets a ground. I wrapped it in tape and jammed it up behind the plastic support.

Resources and thanks.
First and foremost thank you to rkrenicki on SLi for his experimenting and enormous amount of effort documenting this all. A lot of my information came from this thread. It contains the BFM pinouts, how to identify them via serial number and a lot of tips and so forth.
Adam for pestering me enough to get started
Rob for suppling me with a speedo board to tinker with
Ty for helping with the speedo wiring

[meepers]

Very nice. I have had most of the stuff to do this for a while other then time. I would love to see some more photos of how you actually mounted the board, and how the cluster bezel looks installed. Congrats

[Barbbachello]

It's not mounted. It's just jammed in there but it's rock solid. What do you mean by cluster bezel?

[meepers]

How the clear cover of the gauges looks against the black plastic bezel that covers it. I know the lenses are curved opposite from one another

[meepers]

How the clear cover of the gauges looks against the black plastic bezel that covers it. I know the lenses are curved opposite from one another

[rkrenicki]

So, I stumbled across this on YJ today. Someone made a "plug and play" setup for a BFM into a 2nd gen car, complete with a new shroud for the cluster.

http://page6.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp...556#enlargeimg