I bought my Speedster in July. It's a Vintage, '07 build, and had 1500 miles on it when I bought it. I've been working with Tony Merjano, and he has it running perfectly. But like many Vintage cars, my tach doesn't work. Any suggestions for a replacement?
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Mike;
Like all of us, our speedies, many items get swapped out for new/improved parts. Can you give us more info and a pic perhaps?
You are IN LUCK, there are several, astute, speedster owners in the east of Sacramento area.
I'm sure they will comment.
Art
You could replace everything with the VDO Gauges that Carey from Special Edition/Beck designed with VDO. The speedometer is GPS so the speed and mileage is accurate, the fuel gauge works, and the tachometer works correctly. When one of my gauges breaks this is what I'm replacing everything with. The whole set isn't cheap but you probably won't replace them again if you buy them. Here's the link:
http://www.beckspeedster.com/b.../vdoinstruments.html
Or, you could simply contact Kirk Duncan at Vintage Speedsters and, given the low mileage on the car, maybe he could cut you a deal on a replacement, the same as is used on all other Vintage Speedsters.
The tach quit working on my Vintage because a wire had come loose on the coil. When I reattached the wire problem solved.
Joel
Very common problem with the Chinese tachs that are used by Vintage and JPS. Send it to Palo Alto Speedometer or North Hollywood Speedometer and they will replace the electronics with genuine VDO parts for $185 and then forget about it.
The Beck gauges are very nice , but they are smaller and require an adapter to fill the hole and will not match your other gauges.
x2 on Carey's gauges, I replaced mine last year and they are spot on. Again not an inexpensive option but accurate..
Thanks to all for your input. I've been talking to Kirk at Vintage every month since I bought the car. He knows the tachs were problematic and found a new manufacturer. However, he hasn't been able to get them...I talked to him this morning and he hopes they will be in next week. I like Troy's idea and will follow up on that if I can't work something out with Kirk next week. Thanks again to all of you and I'll post again when I've got a functioning tach.
Okay, got a new tach. Kirk got some in and sold me one for the discounted price of about $150, including shipping. Tony put it in for me (I'd like to say I was a big help, but I wasn't...). It was wired a little differently than the previous one, so it wasn't as easy a replacement as expected. Works great. Tells me 3100 rpm at 60mph. What does that tell me about my gearing?
Looks like a stock, 4:12 rear to me. Just like a Volkswagen Beetle.
