Gauges question

[68shortstep]

Sorry for such a long-winded multi-question, but here goes:

Been reading-up on this great forum about Camaro tachs & other almost 30-year-old used gauges being installed into our dash panels. Got to thinking; why use such old & possibly already nearly worn-out hardware, or pay such huge prices ($ 500-plus) for new gauges ???

Sitting in line at a drive-in waiting for a burger & was looking at my '96 Grand Cherokee dash panel & snapped a digital picture - yes, it says 215,500 miles. I use the Jeep hard, but change the oil faithfully every 3000 miles. It never misses a beat. My truck is my "fun weekender" ride.

The big gauges - tach & speedometer - are approx 3-3/4" diameter & the small ones are 1-3/4" as best I can measure them, across the inner black bezel. I know they're somewhat larger diameter than our truck dash opening holes, but not much. The backside pic is an image I copied from an auction listing.

The Jeep gauges & tach are pretty accurate, & obviously they're very long-lasting. This same type dash panel has been used in almost all models of Jeeps for the last 10 years or so, with the newer ones being white-face dials. I see them on "flea-bay" sometimes as low as $ 25.00 or so, and ending with no bids made.

With two large gauges, & four small ones, this would nearly fill a dash up (cheaply), with space left for maybe a moon-eyes clock in the factory center tach-hole, as I've seen some threads discussing.

I'm such a rookie, I don't know enough at all about dash electricals &/or digital issues to try something like this myself (yet). Can gauges like these be put into our dash panels, and how would a digital odometer work with a mechanical-drive like in our trucks ? Or, can a gauge face like these be applied over our old one, still using the mechanical odometer ? Would everything on these gauges have to run through the new car's built-in computer "brain" & be totally unusable in our trucks ?

I know anything's possible if you use a big enough hammer, or throw enough $$$ at it, but is something like this feasible, or just stupid to consider ??? Could be a good project for some of you "experienced" guys.......