The previous owner of my 883 installed an aftermarket HD tach. It works fine at lower RPMs just cruising around town. But under heavy acceleration the needle starts bouncing around like crazy. And at highway speeds the thing just dies completely (needle drops to 0 and doesn't come back up for the rest of the ride). Any idea what might be up with it? I ride pretty conservatively, I'm not close to redlining it or anything.

I drove a manual pickup truck for years so I'm used to shifting by "feel", not by watching the RPMs. So I don't really need the tach. It just bugs me to have a malfunctioning piece of equipment right in front of my face. It's more of an OCD thing than anything...

Any help would be great, thanks!

 

Easiest thing is to remove it. Check the connectors if you decide to keep it. Unless the needle is bouncing from vibration then I would suspect something is loose. Glad I installed the factory tachs on both of my bikes. Everything I own has a working tach and I watch the tachs.

 

Yeah, it's definitely not from the vibration. When I say it's bouncing around I mean it's all over the dial. The needle isn't just wiggling in place because the bike itself is vibrating.

 

I have seen loose wires bouncing in those connectors cause tach bounce.