I have a 2004 Dyna Wide Glide that came stock without a tach. I've been thinking about buying an aftermarket tach and installing it. How difficult is it to install (I am not real mechanically inclined) and would adding it be of enough benefit to offset cost? All advice and opinions are appreciated.

 

The answer to your question depends.

If your going to buy a H-D tach, the instructions and hook-up are very easy because the H-D tach is designed to integrate with the existing wiring. I've added tachs to two previous bikes and in both cases, it was relatively easy (one was a Sporty that has the tach inits own pod and the other was to my Road King where I bought the tach/speedo combo mounted on the gas tank). In both cases, the wires were right where the instruction sheet said they would be and the color coding was right on.

I can't speak for an after market tach.

The second part of this is to warn you that not having patience andenough of the right tools to make the job easy is important - no job is ever easy without the right tools. Remember that mounting the tach may require you to loosen or take off the clamps that secure your handle bars, if you're going to mount a seperate tach pod. To make sure you get your bars back on correctly, you should have a torque wrench available (along with either blue or red thread lock compound).

Twothingsare a given, when you do your own wrenching, you'll get to know your bike and you have no one to blame but yourself if it gets hosed up. BTW, even if the instructions are as clear as they can be, you should have a service manual to reference call-outs in the instructions that are not printed on the instruction sheet.

As far as the bennies vesus the cost, I like to have a tach just to confirm what the motor sounds and the pipes are telling me regarding gear selection and efficient cruising RPMs.

Good luck.

 

Well atated buddy.

I installed the HD nostalgic minitach last month, among other things. Good thing with HD, instructions are pretty well defined and clear. I had 3 wires to contend with:
[ol][*]tach source - installed into empty slot of speedo connector - pin supplied and already crimped for you.[*]power - installed in P&A slot of fuse block - pin supplied and already crimped for you[*]ground - attached to frame.[/ol]
If you lift and pull back the tank, you have anought access to the harness and cable conduit to run the power and ground to the back.

go for it!!

 

bugzapper:

I installed an Autometer Pro Tach on my Son's '04 Deuce a couple of years ago, and it worked absolutely flawless and was hands-down a much better instrument that the POS MoCo Tachs. Did a lot of research on the factory tachs, and found the failure rate was quiet high for them.

Some documentation you'll be interested in:



Also:

[quote]

Accessory Power - 2004 Models

2004 Twin Cam and Sportster vehicles have a "tap off" from the maxifuse called a B+ / P&A

Battery connector. This is the battery power source for electrical accessories that require

constant battery power and in the past would have been connected to the main circuit breaker.

This B+ connector is covered with an empty connector to prevent a short to ground. All P&A

kits packaged after the start of the 2004 model year will have the capability to mate with the B+

connector.

Accessories packaged prior to 2004 model year will require the following procedure for use on a

2004 vehicle. Remove the empty connector from the B+, attach the appropriate wire terminal

from the list below to the fused accessory power wire, mate the assembled connector with the

B+.

Terminal Part Number Wire Size

72101-04 #14 - 16 AWG

72105-04 #12 AWG

72107-04 #16-18 AWG

72125-04 #20-22 AWG

[left]Note[font="times new roman"][

 

I have an 03 Wide Glide and have just scored a riser-mount HD tach and mounting hardware on e-bay but I don't have installation instructions (the tach itself is used (1 year old)). Can someone point me to a set of accurate instructions for my bike? I assume it shouldn't be too hard, but things change sometimes between models of the same bike year-to-year (the instructions above for the 2004 might be totally wrong for my bike). Pardon the newbie question...thanks for any help. BTW, do I need to buy a harness for this or does the necessary wiring come with the tach?

Thanx in advance

 

Your dealer should be able to email you a PDF version of the instructions.&nbsp\\; Chicago HD has done that for me in the past.
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http://www.tinytach.com/tinytach/commercial.php&nbsp\\;
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Malibyte, the 03 Dynas still had the pink tach signal wire under the dash. It's bundled up in the wire harness under there, it was easy to find on mine...the pink wire goes to the yellow tach wire.&nbsp\\;You can also get +12 volts and ground under the dash. If I remember right, the orange/white wire is +12 and goes to the red tach wire. Black is ground and goes to the&nbsp\\;black tach wire.
&nbsp\\;
Here's the mini tach instruction sheet, although the link probably won't work. http://www.box.net/shared/tzgvfzf4so
&nbsp\\;

 

1 wire to positive battery
1 wire to negative battery
1 wire to coil output
&nbsp\\;
Hiding the wire is the hardest part.

 

With the tinytach

One wire wraped around one of the spark plug wires three times.&nbsp\\;You are done.