Tach Repair......

[Mike Stewart]

Folks,

 

I have done a search on this topic and came up with tachs being replaced under warrantee. I bought a tach off ebay that was like new but does not work ($35. dollar investment to replace the faded out tack on my 00 V11). I called Palo Alto Speedo, and they gave me a repair price of $165.00, this seems pretty steep. Anyone else send a tach out for repair or repair one themselfs?

 

Mike

[callison]

Mike, if all you're concerned with is the faded needle, it is not too difficult to pop the bezel off, re-paint the tach needle and put the thing back together. If you break the glass, I have spares. If the tach is not operating, that's a different story, I haven't finished tracing the schematic, plus, the IC chip on the Veglia's is not available commercially as near as I can tell. A new board would have to be cut to use the commercially available IC chip of the same nomenclature.

 

I've taken to just re-posting my approach to this on the MGCL, but here is an exerpt from that concerning tach bezel removal...

 

As for removing the tach to begin with? On the California, it's a bit of a nuisance.

For the 97 California, remove the headlight, the crosspiece between the

tach and speedometer and the other housing screw at the rear of the

tach as well as the rear cover of the instrument light cluster.

Inside the cluster is a screw into the tach housing. Remove that and

as I recall (I am going from memory here and I have certifiable CRS -

Can't Remember S?it) you can remove the tach and detach the wires.

Putting it back on is an amount of fun equal to or greater than the

original process. Be sure to have beer available to relieve the stress

but take care to not imbibe so much that the process becomes impossible.

The (somewhat) easy part is next. Lay the tach face down on a piece of

cardboard or an old dishtowel (go ahead, use a clean dish towel, just

don't expect me to explain it to your wife...) and using a very small

flat blade screwdriver, start prying the bezel lip upwards away from

the tach case that it is rolled over on. Just do a little bit, move a

few degrees around the case and do it again. A little bit of lift each

time. After you've gone around once or twice, you can use a bigger flat

blade screwdriver to pry the bezel lip to a nearly vertical position.

Once you can pull the bezel off of the tach housing, you can repaint the

tach needle.

 

Now put it back together...

 

Put the guts back in and with the bezel face

down on the towel, or yesterdays newspaper since your wife caught you

using her favorite towel with the little house and white picket fence

on it and you're now out in a cold garage with no beer because she took

that away too, and gently start bending the bezel lip back down around

the tach housing. A bit at a time and work your way around. At some

point it becomes possible to take a wooden stick or something similar

and a small hammer finish mashing the lip down tight to the tach case.

You can also use some pliers for the final crimp. Wrap the plier jaws in

masking tape first so you don't mar the tach bezel if you choose to go this

route.

[Mike Stewart]

Thanks Carl

 

Mike