Minor updates. I didn't realize I'd let this go a month, I have been piddling away on it, but the weather... Here's where I left off and where I am now. In the first pic you can see the cluster on the bench with the female end of a factory plug wired into the new gauges. I got the senders installed and the male end hooked up in the truck. No pics of that, just a lot of tedious trimming to length, solder and shrink wrap.
Next pic the cluster is in the truck plugged up. In that pic the key is in the forward position, but the engine is off. But you can see the GEN 1 and GEN 2 lights move to one position was a success, and I can keep tabs on the engine vitals now. Tip of the day to anyone thinking of pulling their cluster to dress it up: Don't put your shift indicator on until the cluster is mounted! I bent my brand new one doing just that. I'm going to see if I can get it true again with a hammer and flat punch, but if not, I'll move the new spring and pointer over to my original "back".
I'm leaving it like that for now. I'm going to get a new dash pad from Cheyenne Pickup Parts, but they're out and won't have any for 30-45 days. Here's a link to the auction I missed:
LINKY
On to other things...