Got the car started and the tach doesn't work, neither does the gas guage and maybe the spedo. Any suggestions?

 

Has the car been sitting for awhile?

 

I doubt its related. The Tach runs off the trailing coil. (if i remember correctly, its the coil closest to the front of the car.) Check the connection. Its just one tiny little wire, so it could have fallen off.

For the gas gauge, your sending unit probably croaked. To replace it you have to drop down the gas tank. It comes out from the top.

 

Yeah it sat for a while.

Sending unit eh? That's easy enough. It's pumping gas though so I dunno!

And as for tach, I'll check that coil, thanks!!

 

You may have to replace the trailing ignitor on the side of the distributor. No big deal, they fail sometimes.

On the gas tank there is a plug about an inch long. If that is loose or disconnected I believe that would cause the guage to not read. I'm not sure if the plug can be reached without removing the 2 bolts behind the rear bumper and dropping the tank partially down, though, but maybe it can.

 

switch trailing and leading coils, if tach works its ignitor...

 

Gotta clean the tank anyway and drop it for that, so no biggie. I'll check that stuff while I'm at it.

 

hey you know it could have been a fuse. Thats my first guess on anything.

 

+1. check the simple cheap stuff first.

 

Sending unit is probably not bad, but just needs some new connectors on the wires and the connectors on the unit to be cleaned, its happened to me on almost every one of my first gens.


the tach not working might be an ignitor, are you getting spark on the trailing side?

 

the trailing ingition is borked
and teh gas guage senders connectors need to be brushed with a wire brush

 

thats what i was thinking.......
ground the sender wires and look to see if the gas guage goes to full of not... if the guage goes up then you know your sender is bad, if your guage dosnt go up, your guage is bad

 

the shitty connector on the tank gets corroded easy
im 90%sure thats all it will be

 

One time the fuse fell out on me. I don't have a fuse cover on mine so I my have bumped it getting into the car. It had slid out of the top clip and the bottom was holding it by the glass.

The fuse on my 1980 controls the tach, gass gauge, clock, basicly everything on the instrument cluster but the speedometer. And the turn signals which was what I noticed first.

 

The speedo is mechanical only. There is a cable that runs from the speedo through the fire wall, under the car back to the side of the transmision.

If your speedo is not working check the cable first to make sure that it is securely connected at both ends.

If it still doesn't work it is either the cable or the gauge that is bad.

I had the same problem with my 1980. I replaced the cable and it still didn't work, so then I had to buy a new speedometer.