I bought a little aftermarket tachometer on my XT Turbo, since my digital dash tach is not as cool as a little needle swinging up and down, it's laggy, and and in the cold (remember, I live in Miami, "cold" is like 40 degrees) the numbers on the digital tach flicker off and on.

 

Don't worry, I didn't get one of those super ricey monster tach's with the huge shift light... lol It's a little 2.5" one that I'm gonna put right on my steering column for that racecar look

 

Anyway, I'm trying to get it installed. I hooked it up to the battery and negative end of ignition coil and it works perfectly. now I just need to get it wired in the cockpit.

 

Drilling a hole in the firewall - driver's side: How thick is it? This is probably a bad idea, but it seems like all the wires for the dash come through on the passenger side. I guess I may just have to run the wire through there, but that's a pain in the rump roast. So is drilling, I suppose, I guess I'm trying to figure out what would be less of a pain...

 

What is the best wire to tap in to to get power and ground in the maze of wires under the steering wheel? It's such a mess in there!

 

There's a another wire that is supposed to go to the dimmer switch, I guess to power the light on the tach. Looking at the FSM, man, I can't find it. I feel like a total retard, At one point I was an electrical engineering major but these diagrams look like the sewers of paris. I am so terrified of doing something dumb and chasing electrical gremlins...

just poke a hole in the throttle cable grommet use a pick or something and be careful.

I my Gregories manual, one of the yellow wires to the back of the instrument panel goes from the ignition coil to the tach, but thats for my wagon, it mite be different for the XT

So I can just drill a hole in the rubber?

So I can just drill a hole in the rubber?

probably

I don't suggest drilling holes in firewalls, and it should be easy to find a pre-drilled hole that is plugged with rubber you can use. It would probably only need a penknife to open a large enough hole up for you to pass wires through.

Yeah, as was suggested above, just poke a little hole in the grommet for the throttle cable or clutch cable. so far I have managed to run wires and hoses for a temp gauge, boost gauge, intercooler sprayer and difflock switch.. all without having to drill new holes. I keep this up and I am going to have to drill a new hole sooner or later..lol

 

 

For the lighting option on the gauge, I generally tap into the illumination wire on the stereo. That way I don't have to wade through a huge mass of crap to find it.