Hey guys/gals, my stock tach has been acting up. Its reading that i'm going above and beyond 7k when i'm WOT. I wanted to remedy this, so I bought a small tach to mount just to give me an idea of my real RPM. Well I ran the green wire(tach wire) through the firewall and now I suppose I'm supposed to hook it up to the distributor some how. I really can't figure out where to hook this wire up to. If someone could shed some light on the installation of this thing it would be greatly appreciated. thanks

 

No problem! Find the gray connector on your ignition coil. Hook the tach wire into the black/white wire.

Don't use a blue "splice" connector. The vibration in that area will result in the splice connector ruining your black/white wire after a few years. Happened to me... car was stalling randomly, one day it stalled and wouldn't start back up. Pulled off the road, wiggled a bunch of wires, car started up. Odd! With the motor running, I wiggled each wire again... when I wiggled the tach connection, the motor stalled.

I got home and checked the wire out- I had two copper strands left! All the rest had been cut thru by the stupid splice connector.

So there's two choices... can you solder? If so, solder the tach lead into the black/white wire.

If you can't solder, you can pick up a crimp tool and a non-insulated butt connector. Cut the black/white wire 3 or four inches from the gray connector. Then use the butt connector to connect all three wires together and crimp it TIGHT.

Bonus points: Slide heat-shrink over the joint before you solder or crimp. Tape works too, but eventually tape unravels- heat shrink won't.

 

nah, i can't solder, i will use a crimper and go that route. now, any suggestions on where to run the power and dimmer wires too inside the car? i appreciate the help tomP, thanks!!!

 

The power wire goes to
PAT'S CHEESE STEAKS
and the dimmer wires goes to
GINO'S CHEESE STEAKS!

 

wait........



cheese steaks? whos hungry?

 

nah, pats was LAST night, NOW we are trying to install a tachometer. c'mon KED85 get with the program alright, installation is complete, lights, power, tach is not reading. i think a faulty connection is playing part in this somewhere. at any rate i'm too frustrated to try and fix this. does anyone have an easier way to get to the ignition coil wires i can hardly get enough slack on the wires to make a proper cut.

 

Wow, it's been a few years, but... I think I tapped +12 behind the fuse box. You'd need to crimp on a "male quick disconnect", and there are little accessory slots on the back of the fuse box (drops down by removing two 7mm screws). This is where the factory got power for any options, like a power antenna.

There are also slots on the front of the fuse box, with arrows pointing to the slots (example, the word "ignition" will have two arrows, pointing to two slots where you could push in a male quick disconnect). The same slots go "thru" to the back of the box.

For dim, you want the solid brown wire coming off your dimmer switch. That's kinda hard to get to; an easy spot to grab the same wire if you have an automatic transmission is the light for the shift indicator plate on the console. You could also try catching the dim wire off of the radio (solid brown, on a separate two-pin connector if you still have the factory radio).

 

i hooked up the tach to the radio, all the connections were right there on the current wire harness, so i just spliced into that. now the only thing i have to figure out is why the tach isnt giving me a reading