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The VDO tachs that came with my 6B engines........I am assuming......are driven by the alternator.

Located on the injector pump drive gear retaining nut is a coupling that drives a right angle "Tach drive"..........the kind that you can hook to a mechanical tach cable.

Can my VDO tach be hooked to either a sensor that reads flywheel teeth or can I get a drive for the VDO tach that will attached to the "Right angle gear drive" located on the front of my engine???

I have heard here in our Sandbox, that the alternator driven units are not very desirable..........is this true???

Harry

I have heard that they are less accurate.

They are OK to use and basically sync your engines while running. I can "feel" when my engines are in harmony without looking at the tach's but it is a good thing to have accuracy.

If you need accuracy than you need some sort of gear tooth driven type tach set up.

There are aftermarket companies that offer gear tooth sensors / senders. DakotaDigital is one, you could try them or give them a call.

Harry
Just went through this with my VDO Ocean gauges as one of my tachs quit. VDO say (without any sympathy) that they could have engineered them to read both but it would have shortened their market. So buy new tachs or repair your alternator. I did the latter and all works just fine.

Thanks Mikey
You and Dreamsicle getting along Okay??? How many hours do you have on her now??

I am thinking of skimping on gages for now......they are easily upgraded at any time later. For me I think the altenator tachs will work just fine

Harry

Harry,
Dreamsicle is becoming a real boat again. Still with the bugs, but slowly getting them sorted. She is a fabulous creek cruiser for the cocktail set and until I get her worthy of taking on the worst that the Bay can throw at her and her geriatric steward she looks good and has the locals asking ? ? ?
Diesels can wait until the economy changes or the Chinese win and then it won't make any difference, until then she's a boat and wants to go.