Hello to everyone at 914 World. I am a longtime visitor to the site but this is my first post. I have a 74 with a 2.2 Subie hooked to the stock tranny through a Kennedy adapter. For 2 years I have driven around without a working tach in my car. Like a lot of fellow 914 owners I didn't want to lay out $300 to have Hollywood convert it for me. The other day I read the post about dash gauges and checked out the link to the tach conversion with modern day tach guts. It looked like way more than I wanted to take on. Somewhere I saw mention of a tach adapter that the poster said did not work very well. Just for the heck of it I googled tach adapter and found a great solution to my problem. I ordered a little unit called tach-adapt from AshlockTech.com Bob the owner says they are available at Pelican & Sierra Madre Collection as well. I am nearby to the seller but I ordered it at noon on Tuesday and it was in my PO box at noon on Wednesday. It is pretty cool because you can set it to run from a 4,6, or 8 cyl. engine and also to run a 4,6, or 8 cyl. tach. by setting 5 dip switches. It converts a modern low voltage signal to run an old school tach. Only 4 wires to set it up. Switched power, Ground, Signal from Ignition or ECU and wire to your tach from adapter. I've only had it less than a day but it is in and seems to work great. I checked it against my timing light tach readout and it seems to be pretty accurate. I had to divide by 2 from my light because of batch firing but it is within 50 RPM or so as far as I can tell. If you are like me driving around without a working tach check it out. It was $70.20 which included the tax and free shipping. I read a couple reviews on Pelican before I bought and they had good things to say as well. Like I said this was my first post but I had to share this because I'm sure there are plenty of conversions with non working tachs out there looking for a simple solution. 6500 RPM here I come!! Cheers.

yes purchased one and got it quickly,I had a question for Bob and he answered within hours,I chose his product over the MSD one because there was talk of occasional failures with these,Bobs unit is also more adaptable to mixed CDI's tacho's and the like also.

Two 914s in the High Desert......nice to meet you.....

A great first post. Now let's see some pictures of your 914 please.

My DIY tach conversion thread was originally developed to solve a single problem with the tachometer needle bounce (hunting) on the stock tachometer. Many people were asking me to solve this problem while retrofitting LED's into their gauges, but limitations of 70s style technology kept me from finding a real solution at least an elegant one.

To stereotype the 914 community, it can simply be said that we are cheap bastards.
So with cheap in mind, I found a inexpensive tachometer that anyone could buy at the local auto parts store. I then reversed engineered the cheap modern tachometer to work with our 914 tachometer as a potential solution.

This worked well but then received requests to make this work with other engines. Calculations were made for certain resistor values so that this would work with 6 and 8 cylinders which will still correlate with the stock 914 tach face dial.

I wrote the DIY thread knowing full well that many average people could or would never want to tackle this project. Instead of just listing this as a service I provide, I wanted to make it public to show people that this can be done (even by you) if you had the desire to do so, and that its possible to have a stock looking gauge with different than stock engines.

Good morning Coondog. More than 2. I have 2 that run 1 that will someday soon and a stripped shell for parts. I have 2 friends, 1 in Phelan, 1 in Palmdale that have 5 between them. I see others now and then up here, but not for a while....nice to meet you too.

Good morning Tim, Don't get me wrong, I think your tach conversion and writeup are brilliant, just over my head to do myself like you said. I would probably like your light upgrade as well. But I have to admit you called the cheap SOB part right. Thanks for the welcome.

Good morning Cairo. Thanks for the welcome. Need help with pics. Something about adding the entire URL. Not sure about that, kind of a dinosaur with computers.

Here, try this:

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=13637

--DD

Here is 1 of my cars....I'll add more laterClick to view attachment

Thanks Dave, I added 1 pic.......I'll post more later.

Most beautiful! And to second Tim's mod; he R&R'd my tach from 8cyl. to 6, for my recent engine swap, and de-bounced it with the replacement tach. Very happy with the results!

And the green car is my friend from Palmdale, the satin black car is mine with the subie that got the tach adapt, and the tangerine car is mine with a 2.0 built with 1.8 case and heads using a 2.0 crank.Click to view attachment

: nice 914 stable

Thanks Jim, nothing special just some pieced together old 914's but thanks.

Thank you much for the kind comments. My little product has been a big hit because it's easy to use and considerably less hassle than rebuilding/re-engineering the tachometer itself. The unit does not introduce any 'error' because it just digitally multiplies and divides by an exact number corresponding to the rate difference between 4, 6 or 8 cylinder operation. It does not correct small calibration errors inherent in the tachometer itself. Glad to hear the 914 community is aware of the product and happy with it.

Kent is using the one I originally bought in his conversion. Very neat little device. Nice if you think you might not stick with the same # cylinders forever once you convert and want to keep the stock look.