Anyone else notice that when it's dark, and you have the lights on, the tach's illumination shows you the increment marks only in the RED zone? Meanwhile, the increments in the safe operating area are invisible.

Sure seems to me like I'd have reversed those. I consider the redline to be a brick wall - I don't need to know that precisely how far I'm over-revving the engine, just that I'm doing it. It would be far more useful to have more resolution in the engine's normal operating range.

 

I just went and checked mine tonight and yeah, you are right, but I don't see it as any big problem. You still have the 500, 1000, 1500, 2000 rpm marks to judge rpm's by, just the in betweeen 100's are not illuminated.

Never paid any attention to this one or even my '03 either, so not sure if it just the '06 that does this or if the '03 showed the in between 100 increments with lights on.

 

Yes, agreed, but the question is "why didn't they make the OTHER ones visible?" I agree it's functional **enough** the way it is, but who needs 100 RPM resolution at night in the red zone? Why not have it in the safe zone instead?

Just a weird design decision, it seems....

 

My '03 is the same. My guess is to prevent 'target fixation' during night driving.

MikeyB

 

My guess is that some engineer thought it either looked cool, or had a wife waiting for him at home...

 

unless you have a manual trans and are downshifting agressively going past 3800+rpm, there is no need to worry about the top end of the tach. the ecm will not allow fueling past the governed point [~3500rpm] try it... with your engine at operating temps, go wot in neutral and watch the tach. it will hit about 3500rpm then level off at 3200rpm.. [and doing this will in no way harm your engine]