Herbold Racing!

Last weekend I decided to try and tackle the very last thing on the car that needs to be working before I can take it to Speedworld for test and tune. That blasted tachometer. It is a 5 inch Auto Meter Autogage. I redid all the connections and read the instructions a dozen times more. It is supposed to be a very simple job with very simple connections. The dashboard lighting in the tach works, and when I turn the key to ACC or RUN the tach goes into a mode where I can adjust the shift RPM point. Those things do work. But the shift light does not come on at all - it is supposed to have a 1 second illuminate test when it is powered up. And the tachometer itself doesnt register the engine RPM correctly at all. Sometimes it would just stay on the preset shift point, but when I give the engine some gas, the needle would weirdly point to incorrect low RPM number.

At this point I asked a question on the MopowerStyle forums in hopes that someone would go "Aha! You forgot to connect this doohickey to that thingamajig!" But nobody could figure it out either. So what I did was I dug through my "things that used to be in the car" pile and found the tachometer that came with the car when I bought it. It was a smaller and older Auto Meter Autogage. I reconnected it to the car and fired up the engine. Lo and behold it worked! At this point I’ve decided that the new tachometer is just plain defective and am going to return it to Summit Racing for an exchange.

http://www.mopowerstyle.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89397

At least I’ll be able to take the car to the drag strip with the old tachometer… once I fix the burnt out shift light bulb in it.

Here are some pictures I took:

And a video proving that the old tachometer still worked: