I am replacing the indicator cluster in my car with a gauge cluster. I understand I need, and have new sending units for the temp and oil pressure to replace the switches. My question concerns the tach.

My car is a V6 and the cluster I received is out of a V8 (even though the seller said otherwise, but then again he said it worked fine and I found the speedometer was frozen and snapped my speedo cable, but I digress). Here's the question - since I have a gauge cluster out of a V8, can I simply swap a tach out of a V6 camaro into that cluster, or is the cluster itself setup for a V8 and thus I'd need the actual cluster/housing out of a V6?

I have read about people attempting to "convert" a V8 tach to work with a V6 by replacing a circuit board, or modifying a resistor, but I wasn't clear if those modifications being discussed were a part of the tach itself, or a part of the cluster in which it's housed.

I hope that makes sense. Thanks.

 

You can just swap out the pull out chip that is just underneath the tach. You will be able to see it easily once you take off the black trim.

 

Yes,.... You can just pull the V6 Tachometer from your original cluster and place it into any other 82-89 Camaro gauge cluster for use in your car. The tach interprets the signal - not the Cluster.

 

Thanks. I took it apart yesterday and see the circuit board that I need to modify. I found a couple old threads discussing it too, but they were all talking about converting a V6 to V8 and the information seemed to conflict a bit.

The thread I found first said to switch the capacitor on the top left of the board (behind the 3250 rpm mark) from .068uf to .0033uf to make it work with a V8. Another post said to leave the .068uf capacitor alone because swapping it would make the tach peg full, and that the one you want to switch was the .0068uf at the top right (behind the 5250 rpm mark) to .0033uf. In any event, it would seem to me, not knowing much about electronics, that from those posts a V6 tach should have a .068uf cap at the top left, and a .0068uf cap at the top right. (Swapping in the .0033 was the solution to make one work with a V8, so I don't think I need a .0033 anywhere)

The problem is, that's what my board has right now, .068 on the left, .0068 on the right. Yet when I install that tach into my car, the tach pegs at a full 7k and stays there. That also seemed strange because if it's actually from a V8 and not a V6, according to the info I've read on here, the rpms should actually be reading at 3/4 of the real rpms because it's only receiving 3 pulses from the V6 instead of the 4 it would expect from a V8. I don't know what would make it peg full.

So if anyone can confirm exactly what those 2 capacitors should be for the tach to work with a V6, I'd really appreciate the info. Or if it should already work with a V6 with those capacitors and there's something else I should check, let me know. Thanks.
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Thanks for the confirming that. Only problem is I don't have a tach in my original cluster, my car came with the base indicator cluster and the big fuel gauge. I bought a replacement gauge cluster, but don't know what car it was in originally, and as you can see from my last post am having all sorts of issues with it. Buyer beware on Ebay I guess =)

It's good to know that if I can't figure out the problem with this one though, that I can hopefully just find a V6 tach somewhere to swap in and still use this cluster with the rest of the gauges.