I just bought a 97 F150 work truck, 4.6L Windsor with auto tranny, that will get relatively little use but will be useful whenever a truck is needed. The odometer doesn't work, stopped at 180K miles, so I bought a new worm gear for that. I also bought a new shift lever because the plastic end broke off the existing one. The tach is dead, and since I'll have the cluster off for other work I'd like to get the tach working. I couldn't find much on the forum about tachs, so I'm asking if anyone has any troubleshooting or repair suggestions.
Thanks.

 

The '97-'98 gauge clusters have the wonderful film backing for electrical connection with the 3 plugs on the harnesses. First indication of bad contact is intermittent reading on one or more gauges. I put a small piece of cardboard under the film right where the connections plug in, to lift the contacts to meet the ones on the plug. That worked for me.

Plan B is to get a donor cluster. Ours doesn't need a reprogram since the odometer is analog (mechanical).

 

Thanks for the response, Warspite. My tach is pinned all the way to the right. Wouldn't that indicate a problem other than an intermittant connection? I think a donor cluster or at least a donor tach may be the way to go.

 

Tach pinned? Got a Roush supercharger under the hood to go that far past redline???

I got a donor for $60 off EBay, where the vendor had a money-back guarantee. Put hyper-white LEDs in, with great results. Sure beat trying to figure out how your original one failed. If you go the donor route, keep your old one, and note the mileage, since the donor will be different. Mine was 14,000 miles over original.

 

Just curious, is that the only gauge that is broke?

 

$60 for a whole cluster? Seems like a bargain. Not concerned about the odometer. Bought truck with mine stopped who knows how long ago at 180K, so to me any mileage is fair game.

 

Yep, except if you include the odometer mentioned in my first post, then that's 2.

 

I heard the tach only came in manual trans trucks.

 

OK, yeah, I think going with a used cluster is your best bet then. Sometimes the harness on these rubs the gear shift rod in the steering column, and eventually eats a hole in them.You may want to just look at that, but usually it affects more than one gauge when it happens.

 

Auto's got it too. I think it has to do with the trim package. I'm pretty sure all XLT's got it. But I don't think XL's did. I may be wrong, because that is just my junkyard observation.