Ok so i have a CDN Lancer ES with an odometer in km. Just picked up and OZ cluster off a USDM OZ with everything in miles.

My question is: how does the odometer understand miles/km? Is it simply a signal from the tranny that tells it to click over a number? If thats the case then a cluster in miles would turn into km as soon as it was installed right?

Anyone tried this?

 

umm good question...just try it and find out

 

Looks like thats what i'll have to do. Maybe tomorrow

 

if i put in an oz cluster and it's 8000 on it and my car have about 34000, will it stay 8000 or will it pick up my original millage?

 

I've seen people do the swap before. The car just outputs a number of revolutions to the gauge cluster, and the gauge cluster interprets the speed whether its in km/h or mph.
Also- the odometer will stay at the mileage that is on the cluster you replace it with. The lancer cluster's mileage is stored in a little microchip on the back of the cluster. Don't try to get it off, because unless you can micro-solder you will never replace it. So, if you had 34000km on your car, and the new cluster has 8000 miles, your car will now show 8000 miles. There is only one other option. You would have to send the cluster out to get calibrated by a certified person to change the milage. There is a topic that already covered this, you would have to search for it.