Thursday, September 22, 2011

Sit-Rep: Tach & Antennae

July 22 (ish), 2011

This is pretty brief, but it comes in the form of a micro-rant. I hate it when car companies think that since the vehicle is automatic the driver has no regard for what the engine is doing, so they don't bother installing a tach to save space or something. This is even more prevalent in a stickshift (such as my Echo, which is standard, and has no tach... I suppose they want me to just guess?)

Because of this manufacturing gaffe, I bought an inexpensive tach for the echo years ago, but it turned out to be incompatible with the more sophisticated (though I typically like sophistication in a lot of things) ignition system. I therefore shelved it for a few years until I got around to installing it in the more archaic 70's bred Wagoneer ignition system (which as legend has it was cobbled from Ford).

This was just about as easy as that staples button. A quick self tapping screw holds the mount against the A pillar, and the wiring tucks neatly doen the side of the dash behind the weatherstripping. It then runs through the firewall to it's respective coil mount.


Next came the relocation of the radio antennae. This was also fairly easy, using a shortened section of the cable routed behind the passenger side dash (which is a completely empty cavern I might add, tucked behind the original 1963 dash steel that Jeep neve bothered to change). There is a 1/2" hole at the end of the dash where I fished the cable through, and turned it up to plug into the original exterior mount. Then I essentially just jammed it in place, with the provision that I would later secure it somehow. Note; this requires you to either cut your antennae down to about 16" or use an off the shelf shortened one. I had some of these yellow ones laying around in new packages, so I popped one open and it slotted in as a perfect fit. Now my 1 speaker radio has some matching receiver action to boot.




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