i bought my manual used with no tach in it but im putting an aftermarket one in now... unfortuntely, ford didnt have the wires all together so i could just plug it in when you take out the instrument cluster. so i went down to the dealership and looked in some books and found out where the wires for the ground, power and illumination go and plugged them in. what i havent found out or done is the 4th wire that has to hook up to the ignition coil. in my 4.2 there are 4 wires in a connector that plug into the coil. i was wondering if any of you guys have done this and know which wire to hook the tach up to for a reading. its in a really bad position and i dont want to do the trial and error thing.

thanks

 

mmmm, the wonders of wiring. Well, you'll probably have an answer by the time I do this, but I'll look at my manual and see where you need to go. I can't do it now because I'm at work, but stay tuned!

 

It seems to me that this question has come up before and someone mentioned that unless the tach is designed for a D.I.S system you needed some kind of adaptor to feed the signal to the tach.

 

joseph... thanks alot man; hope you can find something in there cause i would love to get this thing done and have it up and running...

sigma, you dont get a thank you cause if that is true im going to be mad! hah jk, i hope your wrong but thanks for the advice; well see what joe finds out.

 

DIS = distributorless ignition system, and ALL new vehicles have them now. You only need a tach adapter for a DIS if your purchasing an aftermarket ignition system, like an MSD ignition. If your purchasing a stock Ford tach, you wouldn't need the tach adapters. If you are running an MSD ignition, than you need 2 tach adapters that you can order from MSD's website.

Tom

 

cool, so i got a DIS ignition system, i know that. im not running an MSD aftermarket ignition system. i have the one that came in the truck. the aftermarket tach i bought was not stock Ford because they do not sell them seperately and i didnt want to buy a whole new cluster. i got an autogauge, so do i need any adapter for this with the normal DIS system.

 

I dont know about autogauge. but autometer has a DIS adapter it prolly would work. Model #9117 check out thier website. Yes you do neeed it

 

thanks alot everyone who helped me out, think im going to have it done tomorrow.

 

ok to plug a tach into a f150 v6 wiht out a tach and with out spending alot of money.....

the wire that is pluged into the coil needs to be placed in the #48 pin spot on the pcm.... you will need to soder a pin on the end of the wire and place it on #48 place....

PLEASE CHECK TERMINAL 48 AT THE PCM FIRST FOR A WIRE (white/red) IF YOU HAVE IT THERE, THEN MOST LIKELY IT IS ROUTED AND ALREADY LOCATED BEHIND THE INSTRUMENT CLUSTER! if not then you gotta make the wire..

 

i went through hell getting mine to work... but finally did () anyone that has questions, feel free to ask me

thanks for help everyone

 

Uh, yeah, i have a question. After all that, how did you get it to work. You wouldn't mind sparing some details now would you?

Tom

 

hah not at all, sorry i didnt include it before. i ended up getting that tach adapter that autometer puts out... its pretty much a pain in the *** all the way through but it works. four wires come out of your aftermarket tach. three of them, (ground, illumination, and power) are hooked up to the wires for your gauge cluster... so you take out your cluster and find the appropriate wires in a wiring diagram for your year/model truck and splice them in with some wire connectors. the last wire is the wire that is suppose to connect to the negative coil output from the ignition coil but since we 4.2 liters dont have one you have to buy the adapter. a good place for the adapter is on the battery tray off to the back left hand side so you dont have to drill through your firewall. bolt that bad boy in and that has 4 wires also. 1 is for ground and just hook it up to any old ground you got around. 1 of the wires hooks up to the last wire from your tach that was suppose to be for the negative coil. and the last 2 wires connect to the 12v power wire in the coil pack. on my truck it was the red with green strip. instructions come with the adapter to show you exactly how to do this but if anyone has to end up doing it and has questions... please ask me.

and that was the long story on exactly how i got my tach working. i suppose it wouldnt have been that tough if i knew thats what i had to do from the beginning but of course i had to try everything else first. thanks again for all your inputs and advice.