this is the thread where you state what you want to do and we tell you what’s the traditional way to do it. Or the traditional part to use. I will start it off. I want to put a tach in my car. It is a 1953 ford Customline Tudor sedan. What would some kid have done in the 50s when his car didn’t come with a tach? Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.
something like vintage Stewart-Warner Tach maybe a 8000 rpm at the most.. installed were the clock would be in the dash.
Some guys attached a tach to the steering column, but not sure when that started, I know it was done in the 60s.
Well For one it wouldn't have been a "vintage" or even "period correct" tach in the 50's and probably though the 60's. It would have been what was new at the time. Late 50's though the early 60's the tach to have would have been the Sun FZ . I don't remember seeing tachs on street cars until the early 60's though and they were usually Sun. Rite Auto Tronics came out with their RAC tachs somewhere along in there and having a RAC tach was pretty much considered settling for second best if that high on the scale. The "Oh you have a RAC tach" snicker, thing. Somewhere out in the sheds I still have the one I bought way back when that I probably had on 8 different rigs over the years.
Boden, the kid probably would try to find a wrecked 55 56 57 thunderbird and pulled the tachometer out of the dash.
I would tend to think the first tachs used were military surplus, probably Stewart Warner. They would have came off of military trucks, so in dash mounts unless somebody made up a cup or bracket for them.
I still have a RAC oil pressure gauge somewhere in the garage.. Probably from the late '60s or early '70s.....
I am just asking. In the 1950's would there have even been an 8,000 grand tach? Even if there was , I would think very few kids back then would of had one (8,000 rpm). Probably more in the 3,500/4500 to 6,000.
THIS TO THIS Hello, When we were doing our final detailing of our 1940 Willys 671 SBC coupe for the B/Gas & C/Gas classes, we got a chrome Sun Tach to mount on the dash. It was the right size and looked like most of the other Willys Coupes that were around at the time. But, at the time we also wanted a nice looking tachometer in our 58 Impala because we had just installed the C&O Stick Hydro. The shifting lever selector was blank as our Impala was a 3 speed from the factory and the shift designation was still the blank after the C&O install. We needed more information on when to shift the manual/auto stick hydro, when the manual times were called for in acceleration. (as we got better, it was the sound and feel that took over manually) The tach would tell us when. So, we tried another big chrome Sun Tachometer. But, it looked too large for the dash, we did not want to put holes on the dash. It looked too big on the column, as it blocked too much of the speedometer. The lower mounting areas defeated the purpose of looking at the rpms and road at the same time. So, we made a trip to the Douglas Aircraft Surplus Yard to scrounge around for something. We came up empty handed. The ones that were there, were just as large as the original Sun Tachometer. But, we did find some smaller black gauges that came out of some aircraft dashboard. On the way home, we stopped at the Bixby Knolls Army Surplus Store and hunted for something. Luckily, the owner knew right where to go to get a small black tachometer. He showed us that it had a functioning light, how to set it up in our Impala, and it looked like the right size…small, but the numbers were very legible. The black aircraft tachometer came with a small black metal cup covering the back of the tach. Mounting was simple and the wires neatly tucked away. Jnaki It fit, right under the leading edge of the dash and blocked out the last mph at 120. The left side blocked too many low mph shift points. No such thing as traditional, just a backyard alternative to some custom ideas that did not look out of place. (In 1964, our Buick Skylark wire wheels got stolen. The bad guys neatly unscrewed the small black tachometer and cut the wires. They must have liked the fit and finish.) https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/love-for-vintage-tachometer-design.938415/page-3 https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/love-for-vintage-tachometer-design.938415/page-4
Boat tachs found their way into cars back then, although some only went to 5k RPMs. I had an old Chevy with a Faria boat tach clamped to the steering column.
If the original poster was in my part of Socal he would have gone to Blairs and bought a Sun tach and mounted it on the steering column or on the dash. In the late fifties and sixties all I remember were Sun tachs, most in chrome buckets on the steering column or the dash. In the fifties I had the two piece tachs with the red "football". If memory serves me correctly I had gone to my first one piece Sun tach in mid 1960. It was a stock Ventura except for the tach. The tach was stolen one night in 1961 and I turned it in to the Socal AAA insurance company. They paid the claim and cancelled the insurance because the tach made it a "race car". No amount of arguing would change their mind. The family has been with State Farm ever since.
Hello, Traditional means a lot of things for groups of different people. It all stems from a timeline that one has chosen. My brother and I grew up in those early 50s days when any hot rod was a cruiser in So Cal. They were mostly copies of one teens saw in the magazines and race courses, like the dragstrips and the dry lakes. So, mid-50s through mid 60s seems like our “traditional hot rod” car era. Sure, the Flathead came before the Chev/Ford/Olds V8 motors, but it was all 50s-60s V8 motors for us. So, in a sense, the daily street driven hot rod consisted of various coupes/sedans and roadsters. Most of them had the stock motors (Flathead) while others were influenced by the "newish" V8 motors. Not all roadsters and coupes were painted like the show cars, but given a spray of primer, with the hopes of saving enough money to actually get a finished paint job. But, in the meantime, the motors were getting the latest speed parts, modifications and some shiny stuff. Those were manageable with the afterschool jobs. Jnaki My preference would be the primer, as we knew there was no money to do a pristine paint job for those street hot rods. We definitely were limited as teenagers as to what we could manage in our lives. So, as the real life teenager’s hot rods came into being, customizing or adding speed parts was a bit by bit thing to do for all of us. But, what most people did during their time period of building cars, was the “traditional” thing to do. Ours was the late 50s through 1964 era. The hot rods were daily drivers that were used for jobs and school as well as being able to race on Saturdays. That period had its own traditions and early development in hot rods, as well as laying the ground work in the other drag racing classes. Other time periods have their own history and changes. But, for us, the late 50s and early 60s were our traditional hot rod, cruising era. As were Model A roadsters with the stock grille and the Chevy V8 motors. Deep Purple is traditional...
As a kid in the early sixties I had a tach on my 55, it didn't work of course, but it looked cool. I didn't need a tach to find the red line as thats the point where the rod goes thru the pan.
The Jalopy Journal
