Need some ideas - shallow depth tach

I have a lower cage hoop under the cowl on a TR4. It's about 1.5" behind the dash panel. I didn't want to mount a tach on top of the cowl but the cage isn't allowing for the very deep old autometer tach I have laying around (it's like 4.5" deep. I can mount it lower, but steering gets in the way so it ends up in the center of the car with the center about 7" below the cowl top. Any creative, budget-friendly options or ideas?

Some kind of digital linear tach. Aftermarket integrated digital dashes are extremely budget-unfriendly though. You could look at repurposing a sportbike or UTV dash.

Do you need the tach to do anything that a sequential shift light can't do? 

In reply to mazdeuce :

Hmm probably not. Would need to wrap my head around the aesthetics.

Sport bike dash, or even make a diy gauge out of your existing gauge face and a very thin motor.

Awww, Mazdeuce beat me to the sequential shift light idea :(

How about a Trail Tech Vapor? I've seen some guys integrate one on their Locost:

http://www.trailtech.net/digital-gauges/vapor

Or something from Acewell:

http://www.acewell-meter.com/portfolio/#Speedometer

Depending on the make and model, a certain part of the depth of a tachometer is just empty space inside the back 'cup'.  I have a factory tach in my old Pontiac and the back side is sort of bullet shaped so it's fairly deep, but there's not much inside it. 

Can  you disassemble that Autometer tach you have to look inside?  Alternately, if you can I'd go to an auto parts store that has some on display and take a look a them to see if you can find one that could be shortened somehow.

MyChron5 2T as seen on a kart. About 1" deep for the main "brick" and it includes a speedometer, a tachometer, and two temperature gauges.

stuart in mn said:

Depending on the make and model, a certain part of the depth of a tachometer is just empty space inside the back 'cup'.  I have a factory tach in my old Pontiac and the back side is sort of bullet shaped so it's fairly deep, but there's not much inside it. 

Can  you disassemble that Autometer tach you have to look inside?  Alternately, if you can I'd go to an auto parts store that has some on display and take a look a them to see if you can find one that could be shortened somehow.

this is my thought. As these gauges are meant to "be seen" I am willing to bet most of the space inside the cup is just air

I think I'll pull the autometer apart and take a look inside and see how much space it really takes. Seems like the lambo jalpa was going stepper motor and arduino. Autometer may be a good donor for that direction and I'd learn something in the process.

Tel-Tac II, Find someone selling off their sprint car stuff. I bought mine for 125.00 at the local racers swap meet. Over 300.00 from Speedway.