That website is a good read. Thanks.

I really miss the 3rd gens I had.

 

My Impala's tach does the same thing - if I hold a steady RPM, it's fine, but if the engine speed changes quickly, then the tach spikes to its maximum reading and stays there for a second or two. It's rather annoying at the drag strip

 

I think thats a 305 thing, monte SS does the same thing.. revs....revs....revs...holy **** the needle is going past 7 to an imaginary 8.

 

I never noticed that in mine or my dad's? Your engine probably makes as much power as both of those engines together though.

Maybe that is just the tires breaking loose from too much horsepower!

 

You mean to tell me that G8 has a speedometer that goes to only 180 km/h? Wow. That is a first.

Is that true of GT as well?

What is G8's speed governor set at?

 

There is a write-up on thirdgen.org on how to fix that. One of the resistors in the instrument cluster goes bad and causes high than accurate reading. Before I did it the tach was at 7k at idle.

 

I knew a guy in high school that thought that the highest number on the speedometer in a car was a reliable indication of that car's top speed. Seriously, you could have put a 250mph speedometer in an Escort and he would have believed it could go that fast.

 

There are ways to fix that


Making a speedometer go no higher than 85mph to slow people down is ignorant. If you put the same amount of food in smaller packaging people don't eat less. It's just a pansy way of trying to control people without using speed limiters..which is what treehuggers really want.

 

I always figured it was because of the low HP numbers in cars back then. 1981 Corvette. The fastest model that GM offered....190 HP, 3 speed automatic.

The 85 mph limit on speedometers might be why the 84-89 Corvettes had the bar chart that read up to 85 mph. But would give an actual digital readout of your top speed as fast as you wanted to go.


Why does my GTA go to 8000 RPM? I don't know anybody who's going that high more than once.

I agree on Euro cars having crazy speedometers. I remember looking at Jettas and Passats 10 years ago and seeing 240 and 260 gauges. Dream on!

I've had the weirdest luck with speedometers over the years:

89 GTA 240 km....won't get there because the automatic transmission won't go full throttle in 4th

94 Z28 180 km....governor model. A 2.73 geared car that maxed out at 4000 RPM in 3rd gear. Booooo. That got changed. It still irks me that the V6 models had faster speedometers (200 km)

94 Trans Am 150 mph..... 3.23 geared auto. No problems with speedometer, except I lived in Canada.

87 Sunbird GT 140 km....pedal to the metal in 5th gear it would do 160-165 (going off the tach RPM)

The newer Vettes make sense for the most part. 200 gauges in the USA, 300 gauges in Canada. Trouble is when you switch countries with them, all of a sudden you have a 200 km gauge or a 300 mph gauge. (unless you want to keep the other measurement displayed).

 

A buddy of mine claims thats there because that's when the car should be taken out of drive and into overdrive.