Nice. I love the vintage style tachs, especially used in the right application.
Being an older truck, our project ramp truck did not have a tachometer implemented into the dashboard. Shifting manually and having no idea how fast our engine was turning was driving us nuts. Still, we didn’t want to add a tachometer that didn’t fit the character of our 1973 truck.
A talk with Auto Meter Competition Instruments quickly solved the problem. They make a 3 ¾-inch 0-8000 rpm pedestal mount tachometer that would look subtle and period correct on our ramp truck’s steering column. With a $199.95 list price, this gauge (#2897) would not break the bank, or take long to install. The gauge was also lit, so we could read it at night.
We installed the tachometer in just a few minutes, and it has made the truck much nicer to drive. Before, we had no idea if we were shifting at 2500 rpm or 5000 rpm when we went through the gears.
Nice. I love the vintage style tachs, especially used in the right application.
The tach has a spot on look with the rest of the dash.
Seeing the old Ford dash, reminds me of getting into old beverage delivery trucks with manual chokes and granny gear low manual transmissions.
It would be hard to find one today, but I'm pretty sure Ford had an optional in-dash tachometer for those trucks that fit into the blank square in the upper left, over the light switch. There was also an optional vacuum gauge that would go in the same spot, my brother in law had one of those in his F-100 back then.
Tach looks good, period correct and all. Now, about those rpms at speed, just how bad is it? I had a granny 4-speed Dually, sometimes I think it was better before I put a tach in it. A bit different once you know just how fast the engine is turning. 
Sweet!
I have the same thing going with my tow vehicle but while I think the period tach looks great I'm just way to cheap to pay $200 in my Van. Hell I have the el cheapo Sun tach in my vintage race car.
Of course it's these little touches that really make a vehicle.
We were turning about 3000 rpm before we installed the Gear Vendors over-drive. Now we turn about 2200 rpm at 70 mph.
That truck as not expected to go 70 mph.
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