Tachometer's dead.

The car runs now, but my tach needle doesn't even move from-0 rpms when I rev or it idles. It's got a rough idle because there's no muffler but it should be moving altleast when I rev it up.

First and most obvious would be to check the wires and the fuse. I'm not 100% certain, but the tach on my camaro has a wire that runs through the guages fuse.

Do you have a distributor with the coil in the cap, or is it external like a MSD Blaster?

First and most obvious would be to check the wires and the fuse. I'm not 100% certain, but the tach on my camaro has a wire that runs through the guages fuse.

Do you have a distributor with the coil in the cap, or is it external like a MSD Blaster?

the coil is seperate and there's a wire that goes between the cap and the coil, I think...the Ignition coil right? I have an idea then. The wire my be loose.

the coil is seperate and there's a wire that goes between the cap and the coil, I think...the Ignition coil right? I have an idea then. The wire my be loose.

With a seperate ignition coil you may have to use a different type of setup for your tach. a stock tach hooks into a wire plug on the bottom side of the distributor cap that runs to the coil for it's signal. I haven't looked at them in a long time, but there's some different types of senders that can hook up with an external coil. On my car I installed an MSD 6AL ignition box and that has a tachometer plug in it. I really don't remember where I saw the other types, but I'm sure there's cheaper ones out there.

What's bothering me was that the tach was working a year ago, before I changed the cap and rotor/plugs/wires. I'm wondering why it stopped working now.

Maybe it is the fuse, where can I find the tachometer's fuse? I'm having the car inspected soon so either I fix it or they'll fix it. Either way, I'd like to know what's causing the failure.

if it was a blown fuse, other gauges would quit also. i dont know much about how the distributor gets its signal. but i would check there. is the oil pressure gauge thats on the tach work?? also when the key is in off the tach should be at 1000 rpms ( or around there) when you turn the key on does the tach needle fall to 0?

I left my car running for a few minutes, and all of a sudden my Tach and oil pressure gauges are working perfectly. Umm, I didn't do anything to the gauges. I didn't even find the fuses yet.

Same thing happened to my 90 Iroc I had. It was the instrument cluster was bad and had to get a new one. My speedo did not work tho. It would however work 1 out of 100 times. So it was intermittent. Good luck Quick

Same thing happened to my 90 Iroc I had. It was the instrument cluster was bad and had to get a new one. My speedo did not work tho. It would however work 1 out of 100 times. So it was intermittent. Good luck Quick

As he said, it could very well be your instrument cluster. If the problem is intermittent it's the worst type to try and troubleshoot. Chances are that you have a short somewhere or something is going bad (like the instrument cluster) but hasn't completely gone out yet.

In closing, I'd like to 2nd the "Good luck." :grinyes: