'91 244 Clock to Tach Conversion
 

Hello everyone,

I, like many other Volvo owners, would prefer to have a tachometer to a clock-ometer in my gauge cluster. After doing a little reading, it seemed like it would be an easy switch: buy a new gauge face (Dave Barton sold me mine), slap it on, swap the pink/white wire for the red/white wire, and I'd be all set.

However, today I pulled the cluster out and was quite surprised when I found that the back of my tach/clock looks different than the majority of those pictured elsewhere online, and, more importantly, has a different terminal setup (photo attached), in contrast to the 4-male terminal'ed ones I've seen.


The big problem with this alternate layout is that my pink/white clock wire has a male end and connects into the female terminal to the bottom left of the actual clock assembly. However, the red/white wire is female. The only obvious male terminal I see is where the brown wire leads, in the clock's center. Alternatively, I could swap the red/white's female for a male, but since I don't know where the juice is actually going, I'm hesitant to do that.

Can anyone help me out? 11 years ago, it seems, someone else had this same problem, but it doesn't look like it got answered.


Many thanks

Jonas


(final note: I'm not convinced that my gauge cluster is native to the car, since it's got a sticker on it that says Lauderdale Speedometer, Inc, 3/16/04. Whether LSI got their hands on it to fix or if this whole unit was swapped in from them, I don't know, so it may not be a '91.)

fwiw, 1991 parts catalog doesn't show the optiona tach, 1989 did (and our 1987 had one)

unless you have a stick shift, the tach is pretty useless on these cars.

Where'd this come from? The pink/white wire stays right where it is. The white/red wire has the tach signal, and it isn't connected to anything on your cluster -- yet. Swap in the tach in place of the clock, then plug that white/red wire into terminal 1 on the tach. Never mind if your tach has two #1 terminals; they're the same electrically.

Wait. Are you saying that you removed the clock and installed a tach face on the clock gauge that you purchased from Dave Barton's site?

I installed a Tach on a 1990 240 DL. From what I recall all 240's came with the RPM tach wire. Take a look at the below youtube.

All cars should have a Tach and both my automatic 240's have them. I wouldn't have it any other way. Nice to know what your car is idling at and how hard you are pushing a 30 year old car.