Hi guys! I'm pretty new to the cutlasses so go easy on me haha. I'm looking at installing the tick tock tach in my 72 Cutlass supreme. The rear of the tach has 3 studs while originals I've seen had a spade connector as well as 2 studs. Wondering if anyone has found a spade to bolt on the stud, or cut the wiring for a hole connector. Also, I've read that the orange is for the clock and the gray is for the ground. Below are pictures, not sure if I found the right ones or not... 3rd, as for the tach signal, the car had an HEI swap done. Will I need the braided factory style tach wire or not? 4th, where does the 2 amp fuse go?

Thanks guys! photo22.jpg

 

Orange is the always-hot 12V supply for the clock. Grey is for the dash lighting. Brown is for the tach - the brown wire should have a small in-line 2amp fuse and run unbroken (except for the 2amp fuse pod) from the tach, through the firewall, to the negative side of the coil. The entire dash system is grounded through a series of metal straps that are connected by hex-head screws from the gauge pods to each other and the dash. Rather than cut your original wire harness, I suggest making an adapter harness that will get you from the original connector to what you need to plug into the clock/tach pod.

Randy C.

 

Was the brown wire in every harness? I see some brown but can't seem to find the ends yet. Any idea what GM vehicles have that plug? I'd assume anything from the 70s-80s. It's gonna kill me to not be able to use the tach until then!

 

The brown wire with the 2amp in-line fuse for the tach is completely separate and did not come with the regular wire harness. The regular wire harness included a connector (orange wire) for the clock and the ability to connect to the gray wire for dash lights if that third pod included either a clock or the tic-toc-tac. Someone recently advertised the brown wire for sale on this site. Do a search for it and it should come up; then you can see if it is still available.

Randy C.

 

 

Thanks guys! I ended up finding the matching connector for the dash lights out of a squarebody Chevy truck at my local yard. I'll at least have it lit with a working clock until I can get the correct tach wire