ridadyna

I have a '71, 350, with a distributor. The previous owner put in some kind of tach kit and the tach worked for about 3 weeks. I want to fix the tach but my mechanical experience is very limited.
Are there any tach manuals or anything available that I could pick up to help?

mrvette

Your best bet is getting a tach from 75-77 vette and installing that....
while you are at it, update to an HEI dist.....
ditch that old expensive unreliable mechanical tach....it's not worth repair....

GENE

Alwyn678

I totally Disagree.....I just rebuilt my mechanical tach and it is not that hard..Do you know where the problem is and if is the cable or the gears....U may need a new cross gear or possibly a main shaft.....cross gear (20 bucks) heavy duty mainshaft (40 bucks) cable would only be about 20 bucks as well If u snin the cable whil tach is unhooked will it register on the dash..If so it is probably a gear......I just rebuilt mine for 60 bucks and it works like new and new Points and all....U can do it and I would recommend an assembly manual to help

ridadyna

I have a shop manual which is fully illustrated, but I don't think it's an assembly manual where it tells you how to do everything. Where would I get one of these?

Alwyn678

any of the vendors should have the Assembly Manual

mrvette

Alwyn, about 5 years ago or so those dist main shafts for tach drives were about 80-100 bucks, and the rest of the parts were not cheap either....
I really don't know about today, but the issue of reliability still remains...
much less accuracy....

GENE

Tom454

I disagree with the negative comments on the non-hei distributior as well.

E-mail me offline and I'll walk you through the repair (no time for online pi$$ing contests).

I'm not aware of any manual that covers mechanical tach drive distributor repairs in detail.
There are some web sites etc that cover modifications, but these are not useful for basic troubleshooting & repair of the mechanical tach drive dist.

Tom

Alwyn678

To each his own....I think that the mechanical tach is great and I also love points...In fact I had an HEI on my car and i took it off...Found an old mechanical distributor bought it and rebuilt it... Here is a link for the last detail...They sell the heavy duty main shaft for 40 bucks cross gear for 20 bucks and shim kit for 2 bucks....Good Luck http://www.tld-corvette.com/main.htm

ridadyna

Thanks for the site. I'm sure I'll order from here.

I'm not sure if I'll the HEI route or not because everything in the car is still original. I'd like to keep it that way until she dies and I have to rebuild.