Rev counter stopped working, need some advice
 

About a year ago the tachometer/rev counter in my 2002 Mini Cooper stopped working. I took it to a German car repair garage and they put a new rev counter in & it still didn't work. They said there was a problem with the relay to the speedometer/instrument cluster and that the entire instrument cluster would have to be replaced. I opted not to replace it & just go without the rev counter. The problem now is that my car won't pass smog because they cannot get one certain reading off of the rev counter. My question is two fold...do I need to replace the speedometer/instrument cluster in order to get the rev counter to work? and does the rev counter affect the performance of my car? Thanks for your help!

The REv counter is just that a rev counter ... the tach runs off the coil to count firings ... before I'd spend huge $$$ on the replacement clusters
I'd buy an aftermarket tach and mount it up temporarily for them to get the reading