I had the same issue, it was the coding plug. My cluster had been replaced with a 6 cylinder cluster and the previous owner didn't swap over the coding plug, I just swapped out the coding plug from the original cluster to the newer one, problem solved. I would find someone parting an old M42 car or someone who has a bad cluster, I'm sure you can track down a M42 coding plug pretty easily. If the car seems to run strong minus the cluster reading out the proper RPMS, it is the coding plug. An easy way to know is to see where the car shows idle, the car should idle at just around 800rpm, if it shows around 500, its the coding plug.