So... I managed to get my hands on one of those Toyota 4Runner inclinometer clusters. They came in only the top of the line first gen's. It's a pretty cool gadget, and will come in VERY handy when off road. Left to right, an altimeter, left/right degrees of tilt, front/back degrees of tilt. Marked up to 30 degrees, measures up to 40 degrees, but I wouldn't wanna take it that far! Install is kinda rought at the moment, right now it's just screwed onto the dash using stereo mounting brackets, got the lights wired into my stereo power supply, and using my stereo's clock instead of the factory one. The box is made of this plasticy stuff that my friend's girlfriend had.

 

Took the car onto the steepest road in town and the gauge was hitting 20 degrees! Now here's the trig part...

 

What percent grade is 20 degrees? After doing some looking into it I figured out that to find this out, you just take the tangent of 20. This means that 20 degrees on the gauge equals a 36.4% grade. This was on a paved road, by the way.

 

Going the other way around... to go from percent grade, take the arctangent (tan-1 on the calculator button) of the percentage (8%=.08). So, this horrendous 8% grade that I hit on the highway on the way to work measures out to a paltry 4.5 degrees.

I saw one of those the other day, it's awesome. How hard was the install?

Install was SUPER easy. The cluster is all mechanical. The only wiring needed is a power and ground to run the lights. The toughest part is finding a way to mount and enclose it.

For additional resources the boneyard hunters can find them on SR-5 Toyota tercel/4x4 models also.

 

Bill

Cool TROGDOR!! I have only seen one 4Runner have one of those things, it was a 4Runner Turbo that an employee at my Toyota dealer had.

I got a very similar one form a Tercel 4wd and it has the same guages except the altimter is replaced by a 4WD indicator light. I am connecting that to the Tcase's indicator.

do you know what years for a trecel and 4runner?

Neat, I have one of those, but have never installed it into anything yet. I was actually going to install it into my full size Chevy Blazer since that is my main offroad vehicle.

I pulled one and the cover for it from a tercel, 83, mcbrat also has one

I found this one on ebay

 

 

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=2476602169&category=6763

 

Out of a 84-89 Dodge raider montero.

I didnt know they had them.

Some thing to watch for next trip to the JY.

Hmmm...

 

The one in the center appears to be a ball type inclinometer, reading both front/back and left/right tilt. I wonder what the left and right gauges do?

 

We have a few of these Raiders at work, I can check them out.

On the right is a volt meter, left side looks like a pressure gauge of some sort.