3.5" tacho with shift light/EL lighting

[Brayden]

I just found this 3 cylinder tacho while browsing the interwebs, thought you guys might be interested.

http://www.crazysales.com.au/auto-gauge ... ml#proName

[Tez]

Just ordered one... Will feedback how it goes.

[ToranaGuy]

Looks interesting - I've seen the Auto Gauge gauges in a few car's, seem ok. A lot cheaper than Auto Meter items, which i have a couple of in my torana, boost, water temp & oil pressure. I might grab myself one & a boost gauge for my turbo project! Not to mention it would be nice to have both a tacho & boost/vac gauge to run in my newly rebuilt F8b.

Cheers

ToranaGuy

[Brayden]

So Tez, anything to report?

[Tez]

Hi Brayden - Yes - Sorry - Tacho Report!

DELIVERY
Put my money down - Tacho arrived rather promptly a few days later.
- Have bought other stuff from them and never had a problem with this mob.

MOUNTING
After a few days of deciding where/how to fit it, I settled on mounting it to the steering column shroud adjacent to the Speedo - DONT try to dismantle this tacho with the view to rotate it in it's housing (as I thought it aught to do) - It wont, and if you remove the two small screws from the rear of the housing you'll simply allow the circuit board to fall into the sealed enclosure (Don't ask how I know this!)



So I fabricated a customised lump of finest pallet timber to a shape that filled the space between the shroud and the speedo base and then fitted it all up. - I'm happy with the install - I think it looks quite satisfactory.





ELECTRICAL CONNECTION
The Tacho itself is an analogue display of a digital device - the wiring diagram that came with it is adequate if you've ever tinkered with car wiring you should have no problem connecting it up.
I soldered an extension onto the green lead (signal) and fed the end through a grommet up under the dash into the engine bay, followed the existing loom and connected it up to the negative post on the coil (the one that goes to the dissy).
The Black (Earth) wire I simply took to a convenient screw into the car body.
Red is power and I poked about the fuse box to find a lead that was hot only with the ignition "on" and spliced into that.
The two white wires are for the backlight LED lighting and go to a small "black box" that obviously drops 12v to 5v for the LEDs the other side of the black box is red & black. I wired Red into a lead that was live when parkers were on, and the black to the same screw for the unit's earth.
Then I tucked all the extra wiring (The Lighting wiring is rediculously long, given the lengths of the other leads which are adequate except the signal lead which was too short) up under the dashboard and cable tied it up out of the way so it can't come loose at an inappropriate moment and fall into anything and cause a problem.

OPERATION
Being digital (and most likely ex. china) it has a multi-position switch on the back and can be set to work with any of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 cylinders - sweet! - Set the switch to the "3" position.
The unit has an integral shift light and adjustable knob on the front. - I set this to about 5.5 and it flashes briefly when I hit 5,500 revs before shifting up when I'm driving "spiritedly"

NIGHT TIME
The backlight is fiercely bright at night - and throws up a large blue disk on the windscreen - a-la - HUD style. This is a bummer because it does obstruct the view out the windscreen at night. I intend making a shroud I will permenantly attach to the top segment of the tacho that will prevent this effect but not obstruct my view of the tacho itself. Once I've done that, I'll be very happy with it!

P.S. What the hell am I doing wrong? - I want my images to appear in the posting, like I've seen plenty of people do recently... tried using the IMG tag in the editor - thinking that would work - didn't - tried using the URL tag - that didn't work either - gave up! [/img]

[Brayden]

I fixed up your pics. You were linking to the page instead of the image itself. If you want to see what I did just edit your post.

Back to the tacho, how about the important stuff? Is it accurate, smooth, easy to read?

[Tez]

Thanks Brayden!

Accurate ? - I did some sums based on wheel diameter & gear ratios etc. and I reckon it's probably within 100 revs of where it should be at typical road speeds. - It does tend to dance about a little say +/- 100 revs. and is really easy to read (see pic 1 in previous post!).

[ToranaGuy]

Sounds like a good review for such a cheap tacho! I'll mount mine up shortly, when i find the last bits to get my engine going, like the f*cking dipstick!

Cheers

ToranaGuy

[Billie]

Thanks tez, those words of the green lead goes to negative, the dissy one, i can set mine up.

[ToranaGuy]

I should get mine installed properly soon. lol. Been busy with other jobs....

Cheers

ToranaGuy

[Brayden]

Just a note on the 3 cylinder tachos being sold by GlowShift (different to the one in this thread).

Laura bought one and I installed it for her on Thursday, can't get the damn thing to read the tach signal properly. Tried setting it to 3cyl and at idle it jumps around from 3k to 8k. Tried all other cylinder settings with strange results. Laura is writing to the manufacturer for a please explain, but it just seems like they're a dodgy unit.

[Billie]

GlowShift? I have one too, its very dodgy, i cleaned all terminals, still bounces like crazy, i'll send them an email too, get a speco one or something.

[ToranaGuy]

Mine was reading what seemed to be rather fast when i had it hooked up for a test run not so long ago, i thought it might have been some noise from the alternator or stereo, but i'm not sure. I'm going to re-route the signal wire & see if it changes the readout or not.

Cheers

ToranaGuy

[Billie]

I dont think any amount of interuption from my sterio could make it do what it does. Cheaply made, but look great.

[stevan_istheman]

I still can't fault my speco unit...
These days it's a bit out so i'll have to adjust or get it recalibrated. other than that, it's sweet.