On Sunday 08 June 2008 01:16 pm, Bill Pitz wrote:
> David Gersic wrote:
> > On Saturday 07 June 2008 04:42 pm, Terrible Tom wrote:
> >> Well what I'm looking at right now is a 2001 Dodge Neon 5 speed stick,
> >> but no tach. I don't like vehicals with no tach heh.
> >
> > I like the eye-candy of a tach as well, but you should be able to drive
> > it without. I drove my last truck for 10+ years without having a tach.
> >
> > What has always puzzled me is the cars with auto transmissions that have
> > tachs.
>
> I like to have a tach, even on an auto. I like to know what the car is
> doing. It's also nice to have for downshifting when going down hills, etc.
I'm in Illinois. We don't have hills worthy of the name here. Certainly not
anything worth downshifting an auto trans for. And with an auto, isn't the
point of the thing not to have to mess with it like that? I prefer sticks,
where downshifting makes sense, but with autos, I just drop it in D and
drive.
> In general, though, I'm a fan of as many relevant gauges as possible.
If the intended audience is using them, absolutely. I'm thinking of my wife's
Grand Caravan, though. She has a tach, but has no idea what it is or why it's
there. She's perfectly happy with a speedometer, a fuel gauge, and a
"something is broke - stop the car" general warning light. Even the fuel
gauge could be replaced with a "get gas now" warning light, and that'd be
sufficient.
It just seems like the manufacturers have switched from providing a useful
gauge (tach) on a car where it would actually be useful (a Neon with a 5sp),
to providing it as part of an upgraded interior package that rules out the
base model even getting it, so you only get a tach if you also get the CD
player, leather seats, and the auto transmission.
> It's disappointing to me that gauges are disappearing in newer cars and
> not being replaced with anything but idiot lights.
So you haven't run in to the (Ford?) pickups that had an oil pressure gauge in
the cluster, but didn't have an actual pressure sender to go with it.
Instead, they had it wired up so that it was actually being used as a light.
If it was "on" - the gauge showed a good pressure. If there was a problem,
they turned the gauge off, so it dropped to zero. There were no intermediate
states it could show.
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