Hi gang. Back in 2000 I bought a Focus here in Ontario. The little darling never read Consumer Reports so it's been my most enjoyable automotive ownership experience in over 40 years. I was going to trade it this year but it's running so well that I decided to keep it until it needs major repairs.
But I missed having a tachometer (it's a manual) so I located a cluster from a ZTS from a recycle yard over the Internet. It arrived by Purelator and I put it in. It works but the tach and speedo didn't seem to correlate too well. I brought up the digital readings on the odometer to check it.
The digital readings seem fairly accurate based on highway markers and published road test gearings. So using them as a basis I get the following:
a) the speedo is about 2.5kph (1.5mph) high until about 100 kph, then drops to an error of 1 kph high at 120kph.
b) the tach is about 150rpm low from 1300 to 2200, then drops to very little error by 3500. And strangely enough it's dead accurate at idle.
Looking at my factory service manual, it warns that a replacement cluster should always be shipped in the correct position, otherwise "silicon fluid can leak out and cause inaccuracy". They don't say what that shipping position is, but I presume it is the same as when mounted in the dash.
When I opened the box it was lying on its back, so this might be the problem.
Does anyone have experience with this? It is likely to correct itself with time? I couldn't see any adjustments on the tach, but aftermarket tachs have adjustment screws, so is there any way to adjust out errors?