Long story short I got screwed over when I bought a gauge cluster off ebay, was listed as from a v6 car, it clearly is not, as the redline on the tach is too low, and the oil pressure gauge is too low, the rest of it will work and I would like to just get a tach and drop it in...since the seller is unwilling due to ignorance to resolve this(his solution is shipping it back at my expense, and he also thinks it will work, and insists its from a v6 car), I don't have the time to hunt down yet another gauge cluster, it took me long enough to find this "v6" one, and turns out I still haven't found the right one because this one isn't right. My car goes into the shop Wednesday and needs to come out inspected by saturday, I don't have time for this bs...so just going to run it with an inaccurate tach till I can find just a tach.

 

i do belive u can recalibrate the tach with a resitor swap. im not sure on this but i recall somone mentioning it before. maybe u can dig up some info on that if its true or not

 

We're in this dilemma project haha. The threads on the resister swap that I've found show only a v6 to a v8 fix.

 

is v6 to v8 tach reading an increase or descrease in resitor value???

if it works for v6 to v8 tach it should work the other way around, just need to know the correct resitor value for the v6 tach

 

Hm, that makes sense.

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/elec...ach-fixed.html

This is what I was looking at.

 

All this talk of resistors is over my head though, is it something your typical auto repair shop could handle or something I would have to figure out on my own??

 

I could always buy an aftermarket one, but it will be more than a used one and it will clash with the other gauges..would really prefer everything match, and I don't have the dough for an all new cluster or I would've gone that route in the first place...

 

Don't worry 3rd gen, it's quite simple if you have someone who knows electronics well. All they need to do is unsolder an old resister and solder in a new resistor. The problem that we're faced with however, is we know what resistor we need to go from v6 to v8, the question is what is the resistor to make it work on a v6. As soon as we get the answer to that question, then you can get this done quite easily.

 

I can't solder to save my life though, even if I did have a soldering gun, any idea as to what kind of place I might take it to for that?

 

Probably a shop that installs car alarms, I'm really not sure bro, sorry. Thank God I have a close friend who is a 4th year electrical major in college. Cha-ching lol

 

any electronics repair place can do it should only cost a few bucks just walk in point out the capcitor that needs to be changed and tell them what rarting capacitor needs to be put in

 

Forgot to mention the other reason I just want to find a tach...which is that the oil pressure gauge does not go high enough, it reads 30 & 60, v6 one reads 40/80..

 

Which reminds me, I unscrewed some type of sensor from the 3.4 oil filter mounting bracket, was this a sending unit? Ie. Can I just throw that into the other oil filter mounting bracket thats on the engine?

 

Well....its not quite the direct answer we were looking for but I came across this....

"Pulse signals are not “different” V6 vs. V8, there are merely less of them per revolution.

3 per rev for a V6, 4 per rev for a V8.

Tachs can be calibrated thusly:

In the dash there is a circuit that moves the pointer.

It’s contained on a small plug-in PCB or integrated in the main board.

On the PCB you’ll see a resistor chip.

Desolder pins 4 & 10.

Use a 500K potentiometer.

Solder it across traces 4 & 10.

Move the potentiometer to half way.

Start the engine and compare the tach reading with a test equipment quality tach.

Dial it in, unsolder one side of the potentiometer, measure it and buy the matching resistor."

 

"For those of you wondering about calibrating an 89 and earlier tach, Morley has an old post that outlines the repair, which is a simple capacitor change. "

Not sure what this is about though? Would that apply to converting tachs as well I wonder? sadly there is no link to this other post thats mentioned...

 

The post I looked at by him is for changing a v6 tach to a v8 one with the capacitor change. That also means the converse is true, that if we have a v8 tach and put in the v6 capacitor it'll work. The problem I'm running into is figuring out what the capacitor on the v6 board is, part number, resistance, something...If someone has a v6 tach maybe they can pull it out and check it for us?

**Note I may be using capacitor and resistor liberally, by no means am I good with electronics >,<**

 

old tachs are a pain in the butt.... I bought a NOS one off ebay and it was bad too. They just get old, caps leak, and unless you know how to do some fancy soldering, you're just outaluck

There is a guy on here that has a V6 cluster on sale for $100, but he doesn't know for sure the tach works on it either

 

$100? Thats asking way too much for a perfect used tach, let alone one that might not even work right, for that much I could get the aftermarket one I want almost, just don't want to do that without changing the others which is where it gets expensive, aftermarket one will clash with stock...

 

well it was $100 for the entire cluster, which if i KNEW the tach worked and so did the trip odometer, I might be tempted to get it

 

Oh, well $100 for whole cluster is about average, if it has a tach and real gauges instead of idiot lights, but you can def get them for less if you hunt around, I see them go for 50ish and got mine for $15, albeit its for a gd v8 car...