Tach should be working tomorrow after work. Thank God I'll be inside and not freezing my ass off while doing it...

I look forward to seeing it working.

So do I...

I had the same problem when I installed my tach adapter on friday, there were 2 red and green wires coming off the same side the EEC diode on the relay center in my car, and i picked the wrong one,so when i started the car I had no tach, but it was a simple fix just switching wires and soldering all of my connections. and now i have a tach.

So is the classic Uni-Tech made by bigcars4ever the only one that taps into the CID sensor wire for the tach input?

Uni-Tech install instructions
https://www.crownvic.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=3252

http://www.diagnostic-assistance.co.uk/cid.htm

*Drock and K-9, you have this as a PM as well *

Ok, I tapped the Tach into one of the wires going into the fuel injectors (one that's giving out the volts I need) and the tach came to life...

Although not the life I expected.

It moved, but it stayed under 1k. On the drive home it acts like it wants to follow the revs but it doesn't actually follow them (again it moves in sync with the revs but stays under 1k).

I'm thinking it's the ground, however I have no idea how to make a good ground. :dunno:

The current ground is on the drivers side fender with two other grounds, however the bolt holding them down has green paint on it. Don't know if that's what's doing it or not.

If you guys can provide me with a surefire ground (Someone before mentioned running the wire over to the negative battery terminal) then I'm in business and I don't have to bring it to the guy who was supposed to do this for me to have him fix the tach.

You shouldn't be doing anything with the fuel injector wiring. You need to wire the autometer tach adapter INLINE of the stock COP power feed (again, see the 98-02 and 03-05 section in my tach faq!)


That ground is fine. All the green paint means is that it's a ground. Just put your ring terminal under the other ones.





The tach moving to the rpms but staying below 1000k sounds JUST like a wrong cylinder setting. My VDO tach responds the same way when not set to 8 cylinder. So, since the MM tach uses an 8cyl input wherever you are souring that tach signal probably is probably no good.

Please explain in detail how you have it wired.

Ok, the tach has a Red wire and a Red w. Green stripe wire.

The Red wire loops under the intake tube and follows the harness up to the first fuel injector on the drivers side.

One guy at work checked with his schematics and said all I had to do was look for the consistent wire from all of the injectors which was a Red w. Green stripe wire. The Red wire is connected to that wire leading away from the fuel injector, and the R/G wire is leading towards the fuel injector.

I was doing this off the assumption that all it needed was volts for it to work... (4 days of working on this and lack of sleep result with me making a mistake I didn't even realize I was making...)


Oh to hell with it. Tomorrow at work I'll make the appointment with my guy at the dealership and have him do it the correct way.

While I trust your answer Drock, I don't trust myself to do the job right. Something this simple as hooking a tach up shouldn't have a end result of me cutting random wires under the hood. As it is it's not very pleasant to look at.

On my end, I'm throwing in the towel. If I end up under the hood of my car again with wire cutters I'm gonna end up cutting my own brake line thinking that 'that' wire would give me the juice I need.

AFAIK, yes, the Uni-tech was the only one that tapped the CMP (camshaft position sensor) wiring.
The FRPP unit taps the CKP (crankshaft position sensor) wiring.
The autometer 9117 goes inline of the ignition power feed.

Thanks Derek, I had no idea that the Autometer was not working off the CID/CMP when I posted before. Too bad sales dropped when Ford came out with their own version, the Uni-Tech is a great product and as shown here, super easy to install.

Sorry I could not help with the Autometer tach driver, but looks like Derek has it covered.

You can do it Vin, do give up yet lol.



First off, again, you don't want to touch the injectors. The wiring to the COILS is what you're after.


You cannot tap at a single coil, or you will get 1/8 the actual rpm. You need this thing inline of the power feed to ALL the coils. That's that red/lg wire. It can probably be wired in another way but why mess with what works?




Since you have the wiring at #8 cylinder already, you can easily correct this. The main splice where that R/LG wire is split for all the COPs is right near that fuel injector.
So, go back further to those big, main connectors. Look for the red/lg wire, there is a pinout on my tach page to help you find it.
Once you find it, you need to cut it, the feed side goes into the tach adapter and the out from the tach adapter goes to the other end leading to the engine/COPs.

once you do that, it should be a-ok

BTW, if you think this is at all confusing you would have loved to do the EATC conversion.
LOL

He may have it covered, but as far as I'm concerned I failed completely at installing the Tach correctly.

I have 2 strikes against me, and I don't want to try for a third.

Works slow all week, so I can afford to be a couple hours late Wed.

I'll have the guy who was supposed to install these gauges rewire the tach correctly and whatever else I screwed up under the hood.

Then when he fixes it, All the wires get a covering of electrical tape, just so it'd sorta look factory under the hood again.

like i said further back with the msd ya have to use the main IGNITION/COIL PACK FEED WIRE. that was somewerre on page 2 if i recall.

i have diagrams and stuff for a mustang 99-04 but its not the same wireing on the vics but hooks up thesame way. took me only a little bit to actually wire it up.

As much as I don't want to throw in the towel, I know what my mental/thinking capacity is like now.

As of right now this would make 5 days of myself working on this cluster swap.

When I don't have something done, it stays on my mind and I can't sleep. So thats 5 days without sleep, whatever thinking part of my brain is still left it can't even remember which wire goes where anymore.

And in the warm shop tonight I thought all I needed was the volts to get the tach working. Again, lack of sleep and logical thinking. If I followed what everyone else has been telling me regarding the tach I wouldn't be in this situation.

Now I'm going to lose another 2 days of sleep over this because its still 'not done'

Thankfully I've gotten past the point of problems being aggrivating enough that I want to sell the car. All I've been during the past 5 days is frustrated at my own skills.

Even though I'm going off of 3 different people (and sometimes even more than that) that have done the swap or know where to move what, I've still been learning as I went.

Pins that should be there weren't there, wire harnesses that should unclip don't unclip. Shennanigans I say!

The only constant problem through out this swap has been me. I'm not as skilled with vehicles as I thought (then again I dislike anything with wires, although I do like soldering now ) and it's been weighing in my head since I started this.

Come Wed. morning it'll be working. And if I have to deal with my mechanic [censored] at me about doing the swap and not going for a simple a-pillar pod tach then so be it. It's what I wanted, and as long as it's done and works I don't care at this point.




Although once it's all buttoned up and working I will have some pride in knowing that 95% of the swap was done by me when my mechanic said 'it couldn't be done.

And the funny thing is, as far as I'm concerned wiring the tach was the easiest part of this whole thing. I can't seem to do that, yet I repinned and rewired the dashboard connecting pins completely myself (You and K-9 did help a bunch, but there were some holes I didn't expect to run into...).

I actually feel great that I've done the absolute hardest part of this install, the tach is just a small bump in the road.

Then again, no sleep.