i i was just wondering if anyone could help me out,
i have recently purchased a 1976 mini clubman s with a 1275 engine and electronic ignition. The guy i brought it of said that the tachometer has not worked since an auto electrtion installed a relay for the ingition to work. It appers that one of the white wires from the tacho goes into the relay box and if you unplug this the engine will not run.

I have tried swaping the tacho with another one to see if the tacho was stuffed but it still does not work.

There are three wires coming out the back of the tacho: two white and one brown. does anyone know what these wires should be conected to for the tacho to work?

And has anyone attached the the original tacho to an electronic ignition, if so could you explain how you did it?

or do i have to go for an aftermarket tacho?

any help would be greatly appreciated!

for an aftermarket tacho -
should be one wire going to the negative side of the coil, one for power, one for light, one for earth

there is two types of standard tacho connections but i cant remember any more than that.

its not a hard job, an auto electrician could do it in 15-30 mins.

From memory some tacho's "read" from different points , some will work with points only and some with electronic only but I don't know all the workings or how to make it work with either . How many auto lec's do we have here , convertible mini is one I think .

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Tacos...ergh... Tachos (electronic) usually depend on a train of pulses coming from your distributor....some electronic ignitions can really play havoc with certain instruments.

Try it on a car with conventional points ignition before chucking it in disgust

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Generally with aftermarket tachos,
Red- 12v from Ign
Black- GND
White- 12v from lights
Green- Neg side of the coil.

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The two white wires on an original Mini Clubman tacho are , one is from Ignition feed Positive and the other to the coil positive + side. Therefore the power to the coil is passing from ignition switch through the Tacho to the coil and it senses the pulsing as the points open and close. Now if this white wire that is supposed to go to the coil has now been used to energise the relay, the tacho will not work. You will need to find which white wire at the tacho comes from Ignition and use it to feed the relay shunt. Then you will need a Battery positive for the relay and an earth, and the output of the relay goes back to the tacho wire that you disconnected the ignition feed from. Sounds complicated. But that is the fact. Take it to a sparky like me that knows Minis ! Cheers.

Thanks for the replying would it work if i bridge the tacho out of the wire that energises the relay, and then wire the tacho in series beetween the negitive - side of the coil and the dizzy?

I think the advice of taking it to the auto elec are sounding pretty good though!

I am not sure if it will work like that but theoretiically it should as it is only normally wired in series with the positive side of the circuit. I think it should work, there is no harm in trying. You might have to try it in both directions as you might have to reverse the flow through the tacho "Loop" because you are now sensing the negative side of the circuit.
Good luck.

cheers, thanks for the help, i will try it over the weekend and report back how i go!

Please make sure you don't let the "smoke" out of the wiring or nothing will ever work again !!! Cheers.

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