replaced "turbo" tach with "NT" tach.

[Brandon92DSM]

I installed a stock NT tach today that I picked up at the local junkyard. Ive kinda always wanted to pitch that useless stock boost guage and go with the clean look, so I figured this would be a winner. I also liked the higher resolution of the bigger NT sweep, and the fact that these are not at all difficult to find at a boneyard. Couple things however:

-Is this ''Okay" to do in general? (ie; is it simple plug and play or are there any gotchas involved here in regards to accuracy or...whatever?)

-This new tach seems to exhibit an unnatural "bounce" or "jump" going from 3500 to 4000ish rpms. Now I know the turbo tach didnt do that, so would this imply that the NT tach I aquired was flawed, or is this indicative of "compatibility issues"?

-Brandon

 

[honduraneclipse]

hmnmmm............. yes it has flaws because it belongs on the NT car not a turbo ...... there is so much more then just plug and play..... there is circuit boards inside that work with the turbo ecu

 

[98TsiAWD]

So you replaced the entire instrument cluster with a NT one? That wont work very well..

If you just swapped out the tach inside the cluster, that might work.

 

[MrPikolo]

Originally posted by 98TsiAWD
So you replaced the entire instrument cluster with a NT one? That wont work very well..

If you just swapped out the tach inside the cluster, that might work.

Why wouldn't it work so well? The only apparent difference is there is no stock boost gauge. Everything else looks the same.

 

[98TsiAWD]

All the wiring scematics (spelling?) should be different. I know a NT 2g cluster wont work in a 2gT.

 

[Brandon92DSM]

Not the whole cluster, just the tach from a NT cluster.

I was messing around with it some more today...went back to the boneyard and picked up two more NT tachs and tried those, but neither of them worked.

Soo, looking again at the one I picked up yesterday, I thought id spray the needle's moving parts underneath the cover real good with some silicone lubricant, and it seemed to cure the sticking and bouncing. On another note, I dont see why using the different tach in the turbo cluster would cause problems. The green board on the back of the cluster has three electrical connections, one for power, one for ground, and one for the tach signal. Maybe im off here, but it seems like the NT tach doesnt have any problem interpreting the signal and making an accurate reading.

With the two dead tachs I decided to make a mess just for the hell of it. I pryed the needles off with a flathead and took the gauges faces off to look at the guts. Taking the needle off and putting it back on messes up its calibration, and risks bending the metal pin the needle attaches to, so dont do this with a good tach. The less you touch it the better.

Oh well hope this helps someone.

 

[98TsiAWD]

The tachs might be interchangeable, but the complete clusters are not.

 

[MrPikolo]

Ahhh, They 1gs looked pretty much the same to me, I havn't gotten the time to look at it. So I am probably wrong