How to extend pickup wire on inductive tach?

[scout-j-m]

A few weeks ago I bought a cheap inductive hour meter/tach off of Amazon. I have been wanting to use it on my freshly rebuilt outboard to both monitor my hours for the break in and use afterwards, however, I have been using it on my mower while I finish up some minor details on my motor work. It works great on my mower but the pickup wire is only about 5 feet long which is way to short to reach my boats console. Tonight I tried using at tap splice to splice on some 16 awg wire but it did not work. Taking a second look I noticed the pickup wire is really two tiny gauge wires shrouded together as one. Am I going to have to run wire for each of them the full length? I'm not even sure where to get wire this small.

 

[scout-j-m]

Not sure how I missed it but the pickup wire says TriumphCable 26awg UL Style 2464.

Maybe shielded speaker wire would do the trick?

 

[lmuss53]

I extended the leads on one for my pontoon using shielded wire from an old fish finder transducer.

I soldered the ends, wrapped them in shielding foil and wrapped the splice with shielding and shrink wrap.

Mine uses a braided outer wire as a ground, and an insulated center wire that wraps around a plug wire.

 

[gm280]

Scout, Are you sure you didn't crimp the shield together with the center wire? Because that would short the signal wire to ground and that would be the reason you didn't get it to work. The Shielding outside wire is there to help with interference and if the two wires are shorted together, there will be no tach signal getting through. JMHO!

 

[scout-j-m]

I extended the leads on one for my pontoon using shielded wire from an old fish finder transducer.

I soldered the ends, wrapped them in shielding foil and wrapped the splice with shielding and shrink wrap.

Mine uses a braided outer wire as a ground, and an insulated center wire that wraps around a plug wire.

That's a good idea. I actually already have an old, unused transducer cable running from the console to the transom already I could use.

 

[scout-j-m]

Scout, Are you sure you didn't crimp the shield together with the center wire? Because that would short the signal wire to ground and that would be the reason you didn't get it to work. The Shielding outside wire is there to help with interference and if the two wires are shorted together, there will be no tach signal getting through. JMHO!

I didn't think of that and I'm sure that's what I did. Thanks!