I've got a 97 civic LX that the tach has quit working on. Couple weeks ago I noticed when I started the car it jumped to like 5k (car was at idle) then slowly came back to normal. Then at lunch I went out and started it and the tack needle when all the way past 8k and stuck there. I've done some searching and *think* its the ICM but I wanted to be sure before I paid for one. Thanks for any help.

 

Sounds like the tachometer is the problem. Hook up an external tachometer to the tach connector under the hood or an OBD2 scan tool that reads live data. If either reads the rpm correctly, then the tachometer in the gauge cluster or the cluster itself is probably bad.

 

ok thanks. I sure hope it isn't the cluster.