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Freewheeler Tach
Hi. I’m new to the forum and this is my first post. I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was 15. I currently own a Freewheeler. This is my first trike and I’m loving it.
I found the forum while I was looking for information about installing a tach on the Freewheeler. I found the post about replacing the entire speedometer with the one with the built in tach. I thought aboutdoing this but decided I didn’t want to take my eyes off the road that much and, to be honest, I’m used to looking at instruments on the handle bars and it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.
I thought I would share the results of my R & D in the hopes of saving others some time.
I found a lot of tach’s for under $100 but most of the reviews complained about the needle jumping a lot. So I decided to get a 2 5/8” Auto Meter tach from their Pro Cycle series (model 19324).
I installed the tach and fired up the bike. The needle was jumping (at idle) from a low that looked like the actual RPM’s to a high some 2000 RPM’s higher. I shut her down and got on the phone with an Auto Meter tech. That’s when I learned about HD’s ion sensing ignition. After much conversation with the tech he told me about the MSD GMR tach pickup (model 8918). If you are not familiar with MSD they have been making ignition products for hot rods and race vehicles for years. The GMR pickup works like a clamp on amp meter except it is very small. About 1” x ½” x ¼”. It installs around (you don’t cut the wire) the +12 volt ignition wire (red/green). The pickup needs switched 12 volt power and it has a green trigger wire that attached to the two green wires from thetach. It required no change to the tach’s default setting.
I fired it up and the tach works great. There is slight needle movement at idle but I think it is actually keeping up with the engine faster than the LCD display can display. While moving the tach is rock solid.
Originally Posted by MDO
