About me
I am an Aussie and classic car enthusiast and have a soft spot for the '67 and '68 model Ford Mustangs. My previous Mustang was a '68 J code fastback, a beautiful car since gone to a new home so I could fund a new project! It's the orange (Vermillion Fire) car that you see on this page. Unfortunately, like many of the '67 and '68 models out there, mine was not a GT. For this reason it was not fitted with the factory tach. I did spend some time in the past scouring the web and eBay in particular for a GT cluster, but found that I could pay up to $1000 dollars for one and then still may be up for a tach repair on top of that! There were NO guarantees. In addition it would mean losing two extra gauges on the dash which I had grown rather fond of. Of course, I could always relocate two aftermarket gauges elsewhere but I had another idea instead.
In my professional life I have a company which specialises in the import, design and manufacturing of automotive and marine gauges. Having worked in the instrumentation field for most of my life I figured it shouldn't be too hard to modify or build a tachometer to suit my purpose. As most '67 and '68 Mustang owners would know, there is a location in the instrument cluster for a factory clock. The clock was an option and not that common, so the majority of the vehicles out there have nothing more than a plastic blank filling the space. Because this is centrally located, I figured it was a great spot to put the tach. The problem was I didn't want to cut my cluster and of course I was after an authentic look.
I set about building my tach using existing tooling that we had available, which after some modification turned out to be ideal. The tach is manufactured using components from various countries but the final assembly and calibration is done under my own roof in Australia .
Yes, it is smaller than the original, but it is a breeze to install, integrates nicely with the existing instrumentation and you will not have to modify anything to install it. I've had nothing but positive comments on the quality, finish and aesthetics.
I'm only producing two versions at the moment, a 0-6000 RPM and a 0-8000 RPM, both for V8's only. I'm not sure of the demand for an I6 version at the moment but anything is possible.
Happy crusing!
Mike Brand
PS: If you'd like to check out my latest aquisition, a 1967 fastback restomod please visit my dedicated website for the project at www.mikesmustang.iinet.net.au Don't expect too much straight up as this one is being built from scratch. It started with a shell