Hello all. A week ago I purchased a 1993 Del Sol S with auto transmission. It runs perfect but the RPM needle flickers about wildly. As far as I can tell the RPMs are not actually changing in the engine to reflect the flickering on the gauge. The car drives smooth and shifts fine. Occasionally the speedometer gauge does the same flicker thing too.
Does anyone have any suggestions on what the root cause might be? Since I can pick up a gauge cluster for about $50 on ebay I was gonna purchase a new one and see if that fixes the problem. IS there any difference in the clusters from a manual vs auto car.
Thank you for your time.
Andy
xx7xx@hotmail.com

 

Add the same issue at the some point. A few days later the alternator died, changed it and never had a problem again.

Watch out for a dieing alternator I guess.

 

Could be the ignitor in the distributor, my car did the same thing than the dizzy took a crap the next week.

 

Since posting, I have replaced the distributor (which houses the rpm senson) and the gauge cluster. Although the problem is less frequent, it still happens, mostly at speeds of about 60mph. Ill be driveing at 60 MPH with the tach at 3000 RPM. Ill give it some gas and the tach jumps instantly up to 6000 RPM. If i back off the gass, it goes back down to 3000 RPM. The engine is not reving higher, its just the tach racing.
Does anyone have another part in mind that might be causing this problem.

 

I think the problem is in the ignition switch wiring. The car started to die while driving down the road. I would wigle the ignition switch and the car would start right back up. I can not get the problem to occur when a meter is hooked up, so i cant confirm it. However, I have not had the problem in quite some time. I must have jostled something in the column when i was hooking up the meeter.