BrillianceLin

Hello everyone, it has been a long time I have not posted anything here. The reason is simply. My EM2 is giving me such a good time, and I virtually taking the car out for a spin (on top of daily commute) everyday. However, I still have problem on tapping in the full power of the pittful stock D17A because my EM2 DX does not come with a tach. It is logical that I am put one on by myself. After searching thought the forum (including others), I belive the engine speed signal wire from ECU is already routed into the terminal under dashboard. And for some reasons, I believe the wire should be blue! And I was lucky enough to find a under dash terminal picture for 01-04 Civic with a 32 pin connector. But the problem comes in with my 05 EM2 that it uses 2 16 pin connector. To add on to the problem, I find out there are 3 wires are in blue. (as attached pic.) Unfortunely, it seems the maintenace manual does not provide useful information. So I would like to ask if anyone is able to give me a hand on which blue wire I should hack.
Moreover, it appear there are unused female slot on the terminal box. Can I tap in any of this for tach. lumination power?

By the way, I have try to look for help in another Civic Forum serverial days back. But no help yet, so I am hope I will have better luck here.


Cheer
B. L.

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

eh, save the hassle and get an 01-02 lx/ex cluster off ebay with a tach. it will plug right in. the only hard part is finding one that has close to the same mileage. search ebay for "01 civic cluster" and look thru the results. most go for $100 or less and most have the mileage listed. and the rpm wire is already in the harness so plug the new gauges in and youre good to go. also try and match the cluster to coupe or sedan because they have different backlight colors (green vs orange).

BrillianceLin

Well, thanks for the reply. I have already get the tach... for $25 with all the harness.... So I do not want to waste it. But talking about the mileage, I know some manufacture store the milage in a chip on dash board... You can swap the chip to get your real mileage back.NOT sure if honda has it on the dash board.

Still, I wanna put the after market on...

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

oh, well then the tach wire is on the harness that plugs into the gauges. lemme see if i can look up which one specifically. i know there is also the blue tach wire by itself near the battery under the hood (its a "rpm test" wire with a connector on it coming from the wire harness near the passenger side headlight).

okay for the wire on the gauge cluster harness, you want to tap the BLUE wire (solid blue color) on the green colored connector thats plugged into the gauges. there is only one solid blue wire, the rest have other color stripes. do not cut the wire, it still needs to feed into the cluster for the other gauges to work properly.

pwnsauce

behind the passenger headlight is a blue wire with silver/grey stripes...just splice the end of that route it back to the grommet CAREFULLY push it through and under the dash to ur tach. trust me its much easier than trying to find it on the cluster...take a look at my tach install

tipnitty

You will find some sort of wire near your rear axle, tie the wire to those and drag the tach behind your car. Don't be a cheap *** and do this properly. Adding a tach will look horrible

BrillianceLin

Hi, thanks for the suggestion. But I like to get gauge install without hacking any wire (the previous owner modify the car to have DRL by hacking the crap out of the harness, that will greatly compromise the reliability when connection start aging). and without run the wire all the way to engine bay. Since I just park my car at the side of the street, it make me nervous very time I try to access the under dash fuse box. and I find out there is almost impossible to disconnect any connector shown in photo without a secure parking place. Therefore, I will consult the maintenance manual to see if I can tackle the problem from the gauge cluster side. The connector on that side seems to have test slots for trouble shooting. I will see if I am able to use them for my favor.

lazlong

It'll be the blue w/white strip wire at the gauge cluster connector. Depending on the type of cluster you have it'll either be in the A12 or A4 spot. Simple way to test is to put the front of the car on stands and test at that blue/white wire if the the voltage rises or falls with RPM. Obviously you have to remove the cluster to do this. Remember to dis-connect the battery before dis-connecting anything electrical.

BrillianceLin

Well， I got it done。I was following the safety precaution at the beginning, but later I need to test the wire and pretty much plug and unplug the gauge cluster when the battery is online. Did not do much damage, and it shouldn't anyway， it just a combination of indication circuit. I will open another thread to provide more detail.