hey boys/girls... I'm in the process of putting a 53' chevy together, it's a period build(mid 50's).. I've got a good jump on some cool vintage parts for her, but I'm looking for a suggestion as far as a tach, initially I was set on a 50's 6 volt 6 cylinder sun tach and sender.. then Ive been following a bunch of threads on issues with batteries and such for the old ones and converting them is just too damn expensive for me at this point.. I have a little money to play with and I'm doing good scrounging up parts that are clean or need little work so I'm staying on budget.. and $250 for a tach and send(if I'm lucky) and then another $300 to get it working right... will kill my budget. SO... is there another option? I found a 6 volt 6 cylinder tach by Faria... not super cheap but its totally restored and nice... but i'm not totally sold on it... any thoughts would be great. I'm sure someone on here will have a few ideas.. thanks!
Not sure of exact date, but I am using this in my '63 Biscayne build. From what I understand it was a kit sold by JC Whitney......(May be a bit newer than yours though...) Not sure of the exact years they sold them. I am sure there are more of them out there if you look.... Good luck,
Heathkit made electronic kits by mail order in the early to mid sixties. There was one Heathkit store that I remember but like J.C. Whitney, if you bought one kit you got frequent catalogs for years. I believe that this is the only car oriented kit that they sold. I thought about building one but their kit cost more than a Dixco at that time and didn't have the cache of the popular tachs. I'd be looking for a mechanical tach. to drive off of the generator. It will cost some to get a generator to drive it but the tach won't need modifications to work.
are you staying with the 6Volt system? If so you're gonna have to stick with the fleabay/swapmeet/junk yard scrounge. If you're converting to 12v I like the look of the Sunpro reissue of the old sweep Sun tach you mention (Summitt carries it). It looks right at home on my afx FWIW.
Sledbuilder, I'm trying to put together the same deal. Have been scrounging around and abit ago found a 6V 6cyl sender. Finally just found a Sun D series tach but i have no idea if the setup is going to work. At work though I wrote down a duracell number that I found online which apparently is a replacement battery that works in the senders. On Monday I'll post in this thread what the battery number is for you.
Here's one I took out of a '50 P/U, you can find the part that drives it or install a newer tack inside it. In classifieds for $150 shipped to lower 48! http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=537838
Here's the Sun "Football" tach in my '40 Ford. Found it, the sender, and a chrome pinch cup on e-Bay, and had the sender converted to solid state by Williamson's Instruments. Overall, not a proposition for the budgetary faint-of-heart, but I wanted the vintage look.
Although it may sound OT check out a VW web site, they show 6 volt tachs and some may have multiple cylinder applications. Good Luck
You would think somebody would start making 6 volt tachs again. They would need to be for 4,6 and 8 cylinder engines and positive or negative ground and look like the old sun tachs. I think there would be a real good market. I have been thinking of looking at old farm machinery for mechanical drive units. A friend of mine has one from J.C. Whitney or Warsasky(sp) that runs off the crank pulley. The other source I was thinking about is old motorcycle tachs that are mechanically driven.
here is a photo of the one I'm thinking about going for... its suppose to be a late 50's faria... its all gone through and ready to run. there is one sun av tach and sender for sale here on the hamb that I'm holding out for... once I here back from the owner I will either jump on that or this faria...time will tell.
I wanted the same type of old style tach for my '57 but was unwilling to pay the price for one. I decided to pull an old Sun Super tach off the shelf and re-do the face to mimic the old AC tach as far as fonts and logos. I wanted to match the color of my dash gauges. Of course you have to retain the sweep of your existing tach so you are limited in that respect. Essentially the conversion cost me nothing but labor. The paint was the most expensive part of it.
The old Sun tachs are killer...pick one of those up if you can. Or really any vintage tach for that matter
yup, I lost one like that while I was out on a tow. They took the tach and oil and water gauges but cut the line on the water one and didn't take the tach sender. Happened after the station closed at night and I was still out. Karma, I guess. I bought it "used", too. Back on topic, in the late 50's even the racers didn't run tachs, too expensive. Not til the mid sixties did I see it common to have one.
Westberg Mfg. (http://www.westach.com/) makes a line of 6 volt tachs. IMHO, how "traditional" they look is a matter of personal judgment.
Super-six, That's great. I talked to two different instrument restoration places that could not come up with a good faux AC 8K tach...what you did there is great - has the right look, reliable electronics, etc. I wanted either that or the footbal tach, but just settled for one of the new $139 Sun retro series tachs... HRJ
I was going to take the artwork file to a screen-printer to get it silkscreened on the original face but they wanted $70 to set-up and print just one. I thought that was a little excessive (although I realize the cost of doing just one) so I ended up printing it on my inkjet printer, using 4x6 photo paper and spraying it with a matte finish. I then glued it to the faceplate. I matched the existing gauge color in my artwork file
The battery number that apparently works in the Sun transmitter boxes is Duracell RM12R. I have not tried one yet as I'm still getting the final pieces together for mine, but will post when I do.
Find a mechanical tach out of an old dump truck or the like and snag the genny while you are at it, it had the drive on the genny. That would be totally period correct. Any period correct tach for a fifties build is going to have a sender. You should be able to find a Sun or S/W that works for 200 bucks if you look long enough. The tach can probably be the last thing that you do nless you have a "killer' 6.
If you're running a 6, check some mod 50s to early 60s boats. I found the following tach in an old Galspar boat and got the SW fuel gauge with sender and steering wheel also... all for effort of taking them out. Sun Electric Company (looks like the football tach but no football on the dial) 10K RPM model FZ-106 N 12V Negative ground 6 cylinder
In my experience, vintage Sun tachs and senders are relatively easy to find on e-Bay, but the chrome pinch cups can be a challenge.
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