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I trust everyone is doing well. Spring is just around the corner here. I can see tree buds starting to swell a bit.

I want to add a tachometer on my mower (Hustler Raptor SD, Kaw FR691V-A527-R). I have a spot for it on the left side of the unit where I can cut a hole in the plastic wheel cover thingy. I searched a bit and found a company that offers some for small engines and includes an hour meter. The hour meter has the old style rolling digits which is what I would like instead of those digital hours meters which fade in the sun and occasionally short out and scramble the hours.

I e-mailed them and they asked me the following question that I need your help with. Specifically, "What is the planned signal source for the tach? (Alternator / charging circuit, flywheel teeth, crank shaft “tone wheel”)".

What should I tell them? To be honest I have no clue what to tell him or what would be best.

Thanks in advance!!!! .......... Rhett

Hi Rhett, interesting question. I'm not an expert on this by any means, but I'm guessing that either the flywheel or crankshaft would be fitted with a self-adhesive reflective marker. Once every engine revolution this would read by a pick-up which feeds the signal to the readout, thus giving you your engine's rpm.

Not exactly sure how it would work on the alternator/charging circuit, but I'm sure one of the more knowledgeable guys will be along soon to explain. Might be helpful if you could post a link to the tachometer in question so the guys know exactly what they're dealing with.

I have a portable tachometer which works on induction - I simply wrap its wire 3 or 4 times around the spark plug lead of whatever machine I want to check and it reads every time the spark plug fires. I know that's not what you want, I just mention it to illustrate another method of reading engine speed.

Hope this helps a little.

Roll on Spring, can't wait.

Chris

Can you give us the model number of the Tach you are interested in and the company you are dealing with. Sounds to me like a Tach used in a larger engine application.

Gentlemen,

Thanks for your replies and sorry for my slow response. I've been trying to respond for 4 days now with no luck.:mur:

I have not picked the exact tach model yet. I was looking at those available from Precision Speed. When I first e-mailed the company they wrote me back and asked the question that I put in my OP on this subject, hence the reason for the post.

In my previous attempts to post I put in a link to their web page. That link may have been the issue and I may have tried to insert it into the message incorrectly. I'll try again below.



Hope this works.

Rhett

Bump: Thought I would retry this since I didn't get a much feedback. Hope it was because the server was acting up back then.

Thanks ......... Rhett

RhettWS said:

Gentlemen,

Thanks for your replies and sorry for my slow response. I've been trying to respond for 4 days now with no luck.:mur:

I have not picked the exact tach model yet. I was looking at those available from Precision Speed. When I first e-mailed the company they wrote me back and asked the question that I put in my OP on this subject, hence the reason for the post.

In my previous attempts to post I put in a link to their web page. That link may have been the issue and I may have tried to insert it into the message incorrectly. I'll try again below.



Hope this works.

Rhett

Click to expand...

http://www.precisionspeed.com/products/small-engine-tachometers/

The engines on ZTRs are setup with a specific low idle RPM and a high idle RPM which is usually 3,600 RPM.
It is usually recommended to operate the machine while mowing with the engine at high idle.
There is a Tiny-Tach that has a wire that is wound around one sparkplug lead which will give you the engine RPM updates every 1/2 second and also record engine hours. As modern small 4 stroke engines produce spark every revolution, these tachs will work on 2 and 4 stroke small engines. just checked out the tiny-tach website and they have added features to the tiny-tach and offer different models and some nice tools.
When the Tiny-Tach first came out many of us power equipment mechs bought one and carried it in our mobile tool boxes as test equipment. We all had vibration tachs, but this little device was a real time saver while troubleshooting small engines.
Checkout Tiny-Tach.com

Mackie,

Thanks for that information. I'll check them out too.:thumbsup: