Did some more searching and finally figured it out. Tapped the light wires into the vacant horn power. Fed the coil wires up thru the tunnel and got the connected. Grounded everything on an unused factory bolt location left over from the bobber conversion. Everything is all buttoned up and wires heat shrunk and tucked away.

May not seem very useful where they are mounted but I wanted a clean triple tree and nothing above the bars. Surprisingly they are both in my extended field of view. To be honest I rarely even look at the speedo unless I see the fuzz and feel I'm going to fast. The tach was more for idle speed and to get an idea of what RPMs I'm at while cruising in specific gears. All I all I'm super happy.

25 bucks for both off eBay. Got them in 2 days and on e I figured out which wire was which took about 30 minutes to install. Took a test run to heat it up and see where my idle speed was and I was sitting at about 1400 RPMs which didn't feel bad without knowledge of the exact rpm. Now I know where it's sitting. Ran the gears out to up to 4500 to see what that felt like and realized when I thought I was pushing each gear I actually had quite a bit to go.

@Kris01

Ya I've read the nay sayers who say it's a waste of money. It was nice to see that my idle was high when I felt it was normal. And even nicer to see that when I felt I was pushing the RPM limit in a few gears I was barely at. 4k with room to go.

For a cheapo tach off eBay it's very responsive. Seems a little slow to drop but that may be due to the 14" or so of wire between the tach and the coil. Not sure if it's like stereo amp power where you have a slight loss of signal power per so much distance of wire. I'm happy and at $25, free shipping to my door in 2 days and a relatively easy install once I figured it out you can't beat it.

I did not however use the individual mount brackets so if anyone needs them I'd throw them in an envelope and send them your way.

Got a link to the tach?

Rylee wrote on 04/19/15 at 13:59:01:


Electricity wouldn't care if the 14 inches was 14 feet on a tach....it requires a tiny amount of current.  Most likely the slow return is caused by the mass/inertia in the needle.  The needle to return the needle back is pretty light compared to the electric up-swing of the needle.  This occurs on most tachs with needles.......higher accuracy is available on digital displays or tachs that have needles that are LED screens.

Not sure I understand your question. The wiring is posted in the 1st post.

Kris01 wrote on 10/14/15 at 20:59:14:


The yellow wire was what was stumping me.  After looking at how the RYCA one was done, they kind of jammed it up in with the coil wire.

Kris01 wrote on 10/16/15 at 16:59:25:


I believe most electronic tachs can use the wrap around the spark plug method, and some of those require a resister if you are going to connect directly to the coil wire.  (My Trail Tech Vapor had all kinds of wacko readings without the resistor and would spike the rpm when you used the turn signals, and also had an rpm where the reading would spike and give false readings and trigger the alarms for rpm).

Most mechanical tachs (needle swings) require direct connection to the coil wire.

Some tachs like the Speedhut are electronic - but have a needle that makes it look like  a mechanical tach.  It was wired directly into the coil and did not need a resistor.