Also if your wanting actual gages on your dakota, why not just buy a Dakota instrument cluster that has the full gages, like from an SLT with a V8 tach board. Thread in the proper sender units on the engine to make em read right, and plug it right in. Why reinvent the wheel.
That would be easier, but I've been looking for a while and haven't found any locally; not many left in the boneyards around here and I'm not paying Ebay prices. So just trying to use what I already have. It's actually a pretty close match.