Jumpy tach?
 

So I've noticed this in my Z and it's a little weird. Under hard acceleration I will sometimes notice the tach needle getting kind of erratic and jumpy. Like it will be increasing and then for a split second it will "stick" and then it will jump up after it gets "unstuck" and it just generally isn't a smooth movement of the needle. When the car starts up the needles all do their sweeps just fine with no jumpy/jerky movements. Anyone else notice this? Am I making something out of nothing here or is this actually a thing.

Is your clutch slipping?

That shouldn't make it "stick" since the RPMS would still jump, infact the tach would race.

I would think that you either have a faulty gauge cluster or a bad engine speed sensor/wire. If it really bothers you, you could try hooking up an external tach to see if you can narrow down the issue to the cluster or the sensor.

this or lack of traction. i doubt the tach is bad.

If the clutch is slipping, the tach will often appear to stick after the clutch grabs.


Could also be a bad ground I guess...

If there was no traction the tach wouldn't stick, it'd spike up as the revs would climb when the wheels spin faster...

my comment was only covering the spikes in acceleration. the sticky tach.... got me.. :\

Well I'm pretty sure the clutch couldn't be slipping, I mean this car only has 9K miles on it, 4 of which were put on by me. This is my first manual car but surely I didn't wear out the clutch in 4K miles, right? Guess I can't know what the previous driver did to it though, but that seems crazy to me.

I doubt it's clutch related at all.

If you are accelerating smoothly when this is happening and the tach is literally sticking at one RPM while you continue to accelerate it's more than likely some electrical issue.

Again I am betting on a bad RPM signal coming from the ignition or a bad cluster. If you were slipping the RPMS would race and likely bog back down when the clutch/tires caught. It wouldn't just "stick".

It is very possible to wear a clutch at 9k if it is overly abused, even if not intentional especially if it wasn't broken in properly but I still don't think that is the issue.

Buy or borrow a dirt cheap tach and hook it up and see if it matches what your cluster is showing when you accelerate. I am sure you could find one on ebay for $20 or find your nearest Honda Civic club.

Or even better, if your within warranty take it to the dealer and save your time/money.

Yeah, I'm definitely accelerating smoothly and if I weren't looking at the tach during hard acceleration I would never even notice the issue because the car feels and sounds fine under heavy load.

Unfortunately it's about to snow here, so I probably won't be able to investigate this issue until next season. The car will still be under warranty though so maybe that's the best way to go.