I thought some of you might like this. After adding a V8 in my 52 Chevy pickup and converting it to a 12 volt system, I decided I needed some accurate gauges. Since I like to keep things simple, I just added four 2-1/8 gauges (fuel, oil, water and volts) into a panel and mounted it under my dash. Now that I had these new gauges, the trucks original 4-gauge cluster served no purpose except to fill the large hole in the dash next to the speedometer. But not for long. One day my buddy Buzz was riding with me and pointed to that dummy gauge and said, You should stick a tach in there. Which I replied, That would be cool, especially if I could make it look like a factory tachometer. After thinking about it the rest of the ride home, I decided Id do it. My plan was to take a new Sun Super II tachometer, take the electronics out and put it into the trucks stock gauge housing. To make this look period correct, the new tachometer would need to have the same lettering style, needle, center trim and mounting screws as the speedometers. Two speedometers would also be needed to do this. (Luckily I had an extra speedometer that I picked up at a swap meet.) The first one was necessary because I needed the housing, dial and needle to make the new tachometer, the second one would be kept original with the exception of the new dial face decal. I started by taking one of the speedometers apart and removing the speedo head. This donor gauge gave up its metal housing, dial, needle, bezel and glass to make the new tachometer. The Sun tachometer was also taken apart to get the circuit board out. After test-fitting the circuit board, dial and needle into the speedometer housing, I had a plan. An aluminum adapter was made so I could mount the trucks original dial onto the tachs circuit board. Next, a hole was cut into the metal speedometer housing and four mounting brackets were made to secure the tachometers plastic cup. After taking some measurements, the cup was shortened and then installed into the housing along with the circuit board. The last step was to make the new dial decals. Using Adobe Illustrator software, new speedometer and tachometer dial faces were created, matching the original number style and layout. To make sure the tachometer would read accurately, the numbers were positioned to match those on the Sun tach dial. As a final touch, I added MPH to the speedometer and RPM x 1000 to the tachometer. The electronic file was then sent to a local graphics shop where a set of vinyl decals were made the same size as the dials. The dials were sanded, primed and painted flat black then the new decals were applied. To keep that original look , I also modified the trucks center dial piece and needle to work with the tachometer. Using a hand held digital tachometer, I verified the engines RPMs so I could reinstall the needle in the right position on the tach. Finally, both gauges were reassembled and installed into the dash.
Very nice job. I did something similar, but not built into the dash, as yours. I tried to make it look like it could have been a factory accessory.
I'm see I'm not alone, did the same to a VDO tach for my 46 Olds, albeit column mounted not in dash. A new decal to replicate the OEM upgraded instrument cluster characters and voila, done.
A guy over on ChevyTalk.Org, DZAUTO/Tom Parsons has done something similar with his 51 Chevrolet 4 door sedan. He used a tach drive genenerator, and made a tach that matches the speedometer, and uses a "pod" of gauges that use the cup the clock would normally use, only he has four of them. I am Butch/56sedandelivery.
Hi! Nice job! I'm thinking about doing something like this to my '53, do you still have the files? Would you share them?
DZAUTO, over on ChevyTalk.Org, has done something similar with his 51 Chevrolet 4 door he's had forever (do a search over there). You can also use a tach drive distributor, or tach drive generator, instead of an electrical impulse style tach. That's a perfect modification done with that old truck. I am Butch/56sedandelivery.
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