Here's how to get it (or ANY part from them) cheaper.

Find it on Ebay and put it in your watch box. Regular price is usually $229. Now patiently wait, and just look at your watch list on a daily basis.

Parts Place has frequent, but short, sales. Today ONLY, for example, I discovered that tach was put on sale for 10% off and I POUNCED! Got it for $206.10.

You can do the same if you buy TODAY:

5500 rpm version:
5500 rpm version

and 5100 rpm version:
5100 rpm version

Tomorrow these prices go back up to $229. But if you keep watching them, they'll go on sale again. Check the purchase history on these items where it shows how many have sold. A good number of buyers get it for $206.10.

I love saving pennies. Thought I'd share.

Been wanting one of these for a while fer the cool factor. Chose Parts Place for low price, plus glass lens and lighted needle. Those features sound kinda cool to me and nobody else seems to offer them. I am committed to getting some primer spots painted on my car in the next month of so, and decided it was time to pull the trigger so I can have my paint guy shoot the tach in correct color while he has the gun out...

Now I'll have to find out if it'll work with my Pertronix, or if I'll have to buy an adapter thingy to make it work. I seem to find mixed answers on that question. I am looking forward to taking a grapefruit sized holesaw to my flawless hood...that aughta be a freaking BLAST!

Maybe after I get this paint work done and tach installed, I'll join the car show with some pics to celebrate. I always thought rear body and rockers in grey primer/black guidecoat wasn't very photo-worthy, so I've been scant with my pics and have just driven and enjoyed the car all summer. But now that the weather is turning I figure I'll go ahead and prettify it completely by having new white paint blended over those ugly spots, and then I'll be less shy...then you can see my all-boring-white 1968 400 Convertible (clone) in all it's glaring glory...

Gimme another month or two and I'll share my car with y'all before I go and make it ugly again somehow...

I bought one for the same price a few weeks ago. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality, but I don't believe the "made in USA" part. It came with SAE nuts for the metric studs. Still a decent part for the price.

Cool! thanks for the info Craze.

Just an update. I got it in the mail real quick, and it looked nice coming out of the box IMO...

Hood template and wiring instructions oddly provided references for GTO's, Tempests and Buicks...and it doesn't even mention the Firebird. Not that it matters at all, as I had no intention of using their template anyway. I'm gonna put it wherever I feel it belongs on the hood based exclusively on my line of sight from drivers seat, hood brace locations, etc. Exact factory placement is meaningless to me.

At first glance I got to wondering if the white gelcoat would be a good color match to my Cameo White car? Not so lucky...the tach is too "white" and my car's Cameo looks yellower. So it'll need to be painted as I fully expected.

Hooked it up temporarily tonite and tested it. It lights up real nice and clear, works smooth, and reads within 50 rpm of my digital Acton tune-up tach. This confirms in my mind that the Pertronix kit is not causing any problems with the tach and I don't need an adaptor, which is obviously nice...

It looks bigger and badder from the drivers seat that I expected. It should be super-easy to read while running down the road, which I wasn't sure would be true.

So color me fully satisfied so far. I just left my positive feedback on Ebay and I'm confident I can paint this sucker and not worry about it being non-functional when I install it.

So next time I find a free moment I suppose I'll determine location and hole-saw a big 'ol hole in my hood!! I might as well do that prior to taking my car into the paint shop just in case I make some sort of terrifying mistake! Once the holes are drilled I'll pull all the necessary rear bumper and other trim off the rear body and rocker areas where I plan on having it painted, and drive it with the tach over to the body shop and let them have it for a week or so...

Stay tuned! My plan is to have this thing all painted and re-assembled before Christmas at the latest. Maybe Thanksgiving if the optimist in me holds true...

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…

Rest of the pics. Drivers view, and negligent/stupid/useless template compared to tach and accurately drilled holes.

Great work crazycars, I've been summoning up the courage to install a hood tach and watched the youtube videos.

I had also thought the hood didn't need to come off as long as I taped up some plastic sheet or large garbage bag under the hood to catch the swarf.

The method of using a roll of tape to centre the cutout within the underhood bracing looks good... where is your tach in relation to the bracing?

How good is the illumination at night?

I more or less just centered it in that opening between all the hood bracing. Didn't cut into any of them. My "rivet" hole is covered by a brace. I just drilled thru both brace and hood surface anyway and it works fine, but the provided rivet would be too short. I didn't plan to use the rivet anyway. Instead I helicoiled the plastic rivet hole in the tach and used a machine screw in place of a rivet. I just used a hole saw itself to locate the center of the circle instead of roll of tape.

Illumination is bright. I'd almost say too bright. Draws attention to itself. It's certainly easy to read night and day.

Car (and tach) are back from paint and assembled, right on schedule. So I'll be posting up some pics of the whole car in the car show thread of Ramblings & Chatter very shortly. And a final comment on this tach I forgot to mention. Confirming what go2fast pointed out early in this thread, and I noticed it when I finally went to bolt it to the hood. The studs on the tach are indeed METRIC. The nuts they provided were SAE. They didn't fit. So the Parts Place template doesn't fit their own tach, and the hardware they provide does not fit their own tach. Makes me seriously wonder about the intelligence of this company. So I had to scrounge thru my spare parts bin for a couple metric nuts to install the tach, and used an 8mm wrench...Pretty dang stupid for an advertised "made in USA" product, being installed on an all-American muscle car, eh???

I'm still satisfied and feel I got my money's worth, but as always, it seems repro products always result in some sort of stupidity.

Ausbird asked about illumination at night. These are not night pics, but garage pics. Should give you a pretty good idea. First pic is drivers line of sight. 2nd pic is an obvious close-up with car running. My parking/dash lights are on...so you can see my cluster is quite a bit dimmer than the tach lighting itself...and you can also see I have a bulb out or bad contact AGAIN on the left side of my freakin speedo...gotta love these clusters LOL. I guess I need to go a-spelunkin' for a cluster light bulb fix again!

I wouldn't buy anything from these slime balls! They're a bunch of friggin' crooks!

I made my own template from thin Masonite and cut it to fit along the side and back edge of the hood. From this I located exactly where I wanted the holes to be and drilled them with a 1/8" bit. It all worked perfectly and was very simple.

I am thinking about buying one as well. I like some of the features in their tach as opposed to others I see on the ebay.

Anyone else had experience with this companies tach? From what the OP said it seems like a really nice tach.

I used the parts place tach. So far so good.

Got mine from them as well, all good, great lighting glass lense and good electronics....

Which bulbs are you guys using to get the tach so bright? Mine is a two bulb and nowhere near like that.

When masking for paint did you just run the tape along the inside and then shoot it? How did you mask it?

The inside was already black so we taped the inside off where the break line is and just shoot the outside. Not sure what bulb it came with but seems nice and bright.

Well this answer will be of no value but I'll type anyway....

I just handed it off and my painter masked it (I was always a bad painter...and don't have a booth...so that's the only thing I sub out.) And I kinda wish I did it myself. Yes he obviously just taped off the black portion and the lens, but the black got a touch of overspray on it. You can even see it in my pic where I show a close-up of the face installed...has a bit of white at the lower left where it's not supposed to be. It's not bad, but not perfect. I know it can clean off, I just haven't done it yet.

As for bulb, whatever it came with from Parts Place is what it has. It is a 2 bulb unit.