Today I drilled up my hood and fit the tach. Still needs paint…wrong shade of white and still in shrinkwrap as you’ll see in pics. But no drilling catastrophes and it lines up exactly where I want it and fits nice. Photos are below. I want to make a few comments to assist others who may purchase this tach (or others). Go get a cup of coffee. I don’t have much to say but I am going to use a lot of words anyway…cuz that’s what I do.

First off, I’ve watched the 2 popular YouTube videos explaining how they did this, and I referenced a multitude of other resources. I've done a lot of auto body work over the years, but never installed a hood tach. Not a huge project and I wasn't intimidated at all, but still I feel it’s always good idea to take a little time to wrap your head around a project like this first and hopefully learn a few tidbits, to prevent damage and unnecessary stress and problems. I also usually find that some info on some of these online resources is wrong…and here are a few of my thoughts on right vs wrong…

Both YouTube videos reference what they seem to feel is a very commonly accepted step one…remove hood from car. The first time I saw this I just had to ask…WHY?! And then again in the 2nd video they do the same. And neither explains why. After I studied the car and thought it thru, I could not think of a single compelling reason this step might be needed, so I did NOT remove my hood, it all went perfect, and fast, I have no regrets, and had no problems. In fact I will go so far as to say it is beneficial to leave the hood in place, and it’s downright senseless to remove it! When you need to drill a locating hole from bottom up, just open the hood and drill the hole. When you need to drill holes from top down, lay a big blanket over your engine to catch metal shavings, close the hood carefully, and drill your holes.

If you do choose to remove your hood you will have the following things working against you. 1. Need two people. 2. Need to take the time to mark hinge locations and deal with panel alignment when reinstalling. 3. When you want to flip the hood over on your work table to drill 2 directions you need 2 people again. 4. You will need a work table or rack that doesn’t scratch paint and a whole bunch of extra room to set it up with a hood on it. 5. With all this excess handling you risk chipping, scratching your hood/fender paint during the R & I process. And God forbid you or your assistant accidentally DROP the hood on a corner or something when flipping it over on the bench. 6. You can’t set the tach on the hood of the car and walk around and get a truly good feel for the exact angle you want to place the tach with reference to driver’s line of sight, overall asthetic appearance, etc.

Compare that to leaving your hood in place, leading to the following disadvantages: <crickets chirping in my head> Well, I just finished this project and I STILL can’t think of one disadvantage…so I guess that’s the end of the list.

So despite what the videos say, DON’T REMOVE YOUR HOOD. Just use blankets and masking tape as needed to protect engine and all painted surfaces from metal shavings and install with the hood in place. Far superior method IMO.

Big hole size. These are all over the board. The 2 videos disagree. I’ve seen references and templates recommending 3.75”, 4”, 4.25”, 5.25”, and just about everything in between. I would suggest you just measure whatever tach you purchase and then make your own call. Parts Place recommended 4.25”. I chose 4”. No regrets.

I’m now gonna toss in an interesting tidbit that I didn’t learn until I studied this tach a bit in my hand…these tachs are NOT symmetrical. The face angles toward the driver a little bit. It’s quite far from square. And the 3 little attaching holes are NOT in a perfect triangle..also slightly assymetrical. YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS AT ALL TIMES. Because if you flip a template upside down (whether you make your own template, or use the included template), you might accidentally drill or mark a mirror image of what you intended to drill or mark. The tach is ASSYMETRICAL, and this is very important to remember when marking drill locations depending on whether you’re looking at the bottom of the hood or the top of the hood, or whenever you’re measuring/transferring hole locations from an upside-down tach to a right-side-up hood.

Now let’s talk about templates. Here’s something where I agree 100% with one of the videos…THROW THE PROVIDED TEMPLATE IN THE TRASH OR USE IT TO WIPE YOUR…!!!! DON’T EVEN READ IT. Now I mentioned earlier that the template didn’t even reference Firebirds…it was for GTO/Tempest/Buick GS, etc…but this has absolutely nothing to do with why I felt the template was junk. One would think that the Parts Place would at LEAST provide a template that FITS THEIR OWN TACH! Nope. Not even close. I thank my lucky stars that I am suspicious of all instructions and make my own decisions. If I had taped this template to my hood in any location and drilled the big hole and 3 small holes based on the template, I would have been REALLY REALLY ticked off because I would have had to drill MORE holes in the right places, or would have had to grab a jigsaw and make mincemeat out of my otherwise perfect 4” round hole.

The pics below show the problem rather clearly. Photo 1 shows the holes I drilled in my hood. These are correctly spaced and the tach fits perfect. Several photos after that show tach set on the holes from various angles so you can see how it looks. The last 2 pics show their provided template. Note when I set THEIR template on THEIR tach (indeed you see no marks on this white piece of paper, because the marks are facing UP toward the bottom of the tach…remember when I told you these tachs are assymetrical??). Notice how I had to cut a big ol' square notch out of the paper toward the face of the tach in the big center hole in order to get the template to fit the bulge in the bottom of the tach. And note in the last pic when I set their template on my drilled hood (now you can see their marks facing up), and I used pencil tips in the 3 attaching holes to hold the template in place, the big nasty 4” hole in the middle is substantially too far back on the hood…by about ¾”. As you can see it’s WAY the heck off. And the small rivet hole at the front of the tach is off to the side by about 1/8" also. So far this is my only big complaint about the Parts Place hood tach: I feel that the template they provide with this tach is not only useless, but downright negligent, and if you actually use it to locate your holes you will drill a massive 4 ¼” hole that will NOT fit their tach until you then hack it all out on one end with a jigsaw after the fact. It’s really that simple…and that stupid.

Also, I didn’t use one single hole size that their template recommended for the 4 holes. IMO they drastically oversized every hole on the template. Every single hole I drilled was smaller than they recommended. Since my measurements were transferred accurately, it fits perfect. If you don’t measure accurately, you might need to hog out or oversize your holes, but I feel the Parts Place suggests holes that are unnecessarily large, so I ignored their suggestions and chose my own sizes. I will add that even if I did use their suggested hole sizes, and used their template, that tach would NOT have fit the hood…

Anywho. I’m still reasonably satisfied with the product, and now I need to get this car over to the paint shop. Appointment is set for next Monday to make the car all white again and to paint my new tach to match the hood.

Assembled pics to follow in the car show someday soon…