MNiceGuy
XS650 Member
I'm in the process of getting a '71 ready to spend some time on the road after a long hiatus. My biggest unknown right now is what to do about the gauges.
Both the speedometer and tach are doing the wild sweeps. I took the tach off for inspection and can hear something relatively large clunking around on the inside. For those unfamiliar with the early gauges, they are unique in that they are sealed/glued cases as well as fact they have straight outdrives (vs the angled ones on later models). Servicing is possible (there is a thread here) but I don't have any donor gauges and that process seems well beyond my skill set.
I picked up a Mike's 80mm tach to at least have that gauge working but unfortunately it seems to stall out over 3K RPM. In other words, it responds well as the engine is revving but the needle stops around 3K even though I can hear RPM climbing past that.
I've tried finding an original replacement but when I actually find one they cost WAY more than I'm willing to spend ($650 in one instance). Now I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to switch to an electronic tach that reads off one of the coils and just accept the fact the gauges will not be OEM?
Anyone else run into this problem? What did you end up doing?
Both the speedometer and tach are doing the wild sweeps. I took the tach off for inspection and can hear something relatively large clunking around on the inside. For those unfamiliar with the early gauges, they are unique in that they are sealed/glued cases as well as fact they have straight outdrives (vs the angled ones on later models). Servicing is possible (there is a thread here) but I don't have any donor gauges and that process seems well beyond my skill set.
I picked up a Mike's 80mm tach to at least have that gauge working but unfortunately it seems to stall out over 3K RPM. In other words, it responds well as the engine is revving but the needle stops around 3K even though I can hear RPM climbing past that.
I've tried finding an original replacement but when I actually find one they cost WAY more than I'm willing to spend ($650 in one instance). Now I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to switch to an electronic tach that reads off one of the coils and just accept the fact the gauges will not be OEM?
Anyone else run into this problem? What did you end up doing?