Hey guys, I'm new here so please bear with me. My wife has a '94 Civic EX, and the tachometer has recently stopped working. The needle had gotten rather eratic for a while, and now it just stays on 0. I know we are getting a tach signal from the distributor's blue wire because we have an aftermartket remote start installed and it still works. I've about narrowed it down that it's the actual tachometer that is bad, and I'm ready to replace it. I've read that the VTech (wow, we can't say the V word?)relies on the tach signal to work, would that be hindered in any way by the tachometer not working? Also, could it cause the engine to sputter at idle? I know that last one is a long shot, but I'm running out of ideas on the engine sputtering part. I'm going to go ahead and replace her plugs and wires tonight, even though they are only 13k miles old. Thanks in advance!

 

VTEC, not V T E C H haha

just the tachometer itself not working? No that shouldnt affect VTEC engagemnt or your idle, you just need either to keep the aftermarket tach or get a new gauge cluster from the same generation as yours, it shoudl be strictly plug n play.

 

vtec works off of oil pressure, not a tach signal. if you want to see if you are getting a tach signal right at your cluster, its actually quite easy if you have a multimeter. just take out you cluster and find the harness or harnesses on the back. unfortunately i cant remember off the top of my head which wire the tack itself it. a haynes or chiltons manual or even someone else here should be able to help out. just ground the negative(black) probe from the mutimeter and use the other probe to test the wire. just shave a tiny bit of insulation off the wire so you can see the bare wire. at idle you should( notice i say should) get a signal of about .4 volts. next rev the motor up and the number should go up and down with the rpm of the motor. if you see that...then its the cluster. i install remote starts and unless you know for sure that they actually hooked up and told it to do tach checking, then it dosnt neccessaraly need a tach signal to work properly. hopefully this helps you out.