Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications General Mods tach

anyone that has done a column tach did you have to get a conversion kit or was it just the tach and the wires? and where did you get yours......i have a 1996 ford contour gl (4cyl)

Talk to alias, he put one on his gl.

Its a pretty simple task... I think the hardest part was getting the data wire to the computer (the one that actually tells the tach what RPM the engine is at. Its a pretty easy procedure. Find the place you most want the tach to be... I hung mine down inside of the gauge cluster to give it more of a stock look.. I have a picture, but I cant access the site from school.. So ill post later with that when I get home. Then you run the power wire to somewhere into the fuse box underneath the dash... get a Volts tester to find somewhere down there that has power Then attach the wire to that. Next you will need to find a ground. Pretty easy just find any spot that has bare metal and a screw on it... Next is the trickey part, the actually data wire, I didnt drill a hole through the firewall, I ended up running the wire between the doors and fender... Ill take some pics of that to show you better what I mean. The only problem I ran into is getting the wire for the light on the tach to the dimmer switch... My dimmer switch does not work, so I ended up just rigging it to my headlights switch, its plenty bright enough for me to see it at night. I got my tach from my brother for christmas, but he got it from autozone, its just one of the smaller Sunpro tach's. nothing extremely special... Its got a white face and will match my new gauges when I get them installed.

ya i got one of those tach's also...mounted it on my dashboard (right hand side) just above the two air vents. Just drilled a hole...screwed in the mount and tightened the unit in place...didnt feel like drilling more holes for the wiring, so i just ran the wires behind the vent, i had the cluster and all out anyway...then ran the wires to the fusebox, found a nice how-to on here somewhere, and guess what? worked first time.

1) Red wire - power
On the main fusebox was a large connector harness with
multiple wires, there was a GREEN wire i spliced into
here, power works

2) Black wire - ground
Found a screw with another ground wire just behind the
hood switch handle, just tightened the wire in here

3) White wire - light
Underneath (behind) the light switch were two wires,
yellow and black, i spliced into the yellow wire, tach
lights up when i turn the lights on

4) Green wire - sensor
If you look under the steering wheel, on the LEFT behind
the light switch, you will see some "boxes" with
harnesses plugged in, there is a GREEN harness, find the
white/black wire and splice into it.

First try works great. The position wasnt really where i wanted it but it was hard to fit my drill in where i DID want it LOL...ah well, gonna add some more gauges too so its fine. I did upload pics to my profile, but hasnt been approved, heres a link to my pic on cardomain, keep in mind this is the first ADDON i have done myself...LOL.





Ken

Ken- when you say use the green/black wire for the sensor, do you mean this is where the tach signal is coming from?

yes, i didnt take off the panel below the steering wheel, but if u look under it on the LEFT (behind the light switch) just above the fuse box, you will see some harnesses...find the GREEN harness, and splice into the WHITE/BLACK wire, that wire has the tach signal..

Ah, now that I think about it(someone will probably chime in), 99's don't have tach wires, IIRC.

Yeah from what I've heard the tach wire was decontented from 98.5 +

so a 96 has it