Celica Forums General Discussion Engine and Performance Damn Tach

i need help by n e 1 who knows bout electric shit on the celi, i bought this tach from a guy i know, which not only looked good but the price was also good 40$. i really just bought it for the shift light but now i wish i hadent bought it. my friend said he could install it because he had installed it on his civic hatchback so i trusted him. man that little [censored] fucked up my car. afer about 30 minutes and bout 10 cables cut later, he said he couldnt fing any fire cables behind the dashboard so he quit. That little bastard let me hangin with me not knowin shit, i had just gotten my car bout 2 months ago. well my cousin helped me get fire straight from the battery with a cable from the battery well everything was fine 2day till bout an hour ago. when i got in my car when i was leavin my cousins house the car wouldnt start, all of the lights inside where dim, my stereo wouldnt work. well my cousin pushed my car and i started it the old fashion way, push & start. My cousin said it was the alternator or the battery but probably the alternator. What the hell can i do? and how much will it cost? please n ebody help. and sorry 4 writing a damn essay bout this but please help.

cant help you out, but i installed a 5" monster tach in mines and all i did was tap the green wire to the ECU, Control Module B on pin 27. Its a brown wire with white stripes i believe. Then the red to 12v and black to ground

i doubt it's the alternator for the sole reason that you got the car push started. if the alternator wasn't making electricity you wouldnt have got the car started at all.

my GUESS would be on the battery. some of the wires that guy snipped might be attached to a piece of metal somewhere and that's draining the battery while your car is parked (like leaving the lights on inside your car overnight).

the same thing happened to me... well not all the stuff about the wires. sorry about that. i did have the lights go dim and the radio would't work and the car didn't turn over at all. if you messed with the battery terminals that could be your problem. all i did to solve it was tightem the clamps on the battery terminal. it was just a little bit loose. it was tight, but not enough evidently. started up like new once i did it. good luck to you and to your friend...lol

u got some damm good friend there

sounds like you shouldn't let friends or family wire your car... lol, j/k man...

Seriously though, it sounds like you may be shorting out somewhere, you will need to have someone (a professional) look over your wires and check your harnesses for issues.

I let NOBODY, except for certified pros and myself, mess with my car. Period.

the celica is a BITCH to work on, especially in the electrical department. Even Tweeter did a half-assed job on my alarm install, I had to go back and fix about three mistakes they made (thank god the wired the remote start correctly!)

For future reference, tachometers usually have four wires:

a ground wire, which should connect to a metal part of the chassis

a power wire (or hot wire) which should be connected to a positive power source that is live when the key is switched to ON or the engine is running. Good source for this is the cig lighter, or off a fuse in the center console.

A tach signal wire, which is connected to a tach signal. I believe you can tap this off the ODB2 plug, or the ECU. Perhaps even from behind the gauge cluster. Our coils are individually connected to the sparkplugs, so no signal wires there. In either case, make sure the tach's cylinder select switch is set to "4"

Lastly, there's usually an illumination wire, which is connected to a wire that has juice in it when your lights are switched on. Once again, the cig lighter is a good source (it has a lamp next to the lighter socket that does this) the dash lighting or other "lights on" sources are good choices. Of course, you can always wire this to power, via a switch, so you can control it's lighting independantly.

last bit of advice: "I installed one on my honda" hardly qualifies him to install it on your celica. they are radically different cars, and he would be lost, unless he worked on a 7th Gen celica before.

I got my car back from some guy that fixed it(i sent it to a professional this time) n he told me that a wire was lose and it had probably mad contact with ground because a fuse had burnt and it also burned the alternator well n e ways everything works good but i have one last question what does the little swith on the back of a Tach mean? I think i saw that it was a 4,6, and an 8. and thanx 4 all the help by every1

Good job man, my tach took my friend 6 hours to install, he thought it would have been easy like an integra but boy was he wrong.

do them #'s mean how many cylinders your car got? because when i put it on the 4 it works as close as the stock tach on the car but when its on 8 it will be a little lower. but i just want 2 make sure