So I said I would post on the ammeter to Voltmeter conversion, so here they are....
Just to recap just a bit, I'm going this route because I'm going to a powermaster 140 one wire alternator as well as I don't want to sit and worry about this car going up in smoke
First off a couple pieces of the old ammeter....Pretty nuts isn't it?? This car had a 50 amp alternator when I pulled it out (nothing special), and who knows how close this came to lighting the dash up in flames.
Check out the heat affected zone on this....Obviously this metal got pretty hot!
Got a little a head of myself before pulling out the camera, but this is the Sunpro 2" Voltmeter (P/N CP8205), with it's guts ripped. To pull out the old meter, take off the two pal nuts for the fuel gauge (face plate overlaps the face plate for the ammeter), then take off the nuts for the ammeter..walla!
you'll need to drill out two very small rivets to seperate the factory faceplate from the ammeter. I used a cutting wheel to cut slots in the voltmeter case. Made the sealed unit come apart real easy.
The center to center holes n the back of the cluster assembly are further apart than the sunpro studs, but the voltmeters studs are smaller so they slide right down in the holes..
Being the studs of the volmeter ride real close to the inside of the cluster housing holes, I covered a good chunk of the studs with heat shrink as well as liquid electrical tape on the transition just to make sure there is no chance it can arc to the housing
I cut the original shorter needle off the sunpro at its base, cut the old one of the factory ammeter and used some JB Kwik Weld to secure in place on the new meter.
I also had to trim down a little finger on the plastic meter housing about an 1/8" of an inch which is used to hold the original sunpro face plate from sitting on the electrical wiring/solder on the unit. Makes the mopar faceplate stick out a bit too far.
I had to do some trimming on the original faceplate with a dremel to fit the meter in correctly. One this meter is secured from the backside, it doesn't budge so I didn't secure in any other manner from the inside. Also the face place is overlaped by the fuel gauge faceplate, so that hold it in place as well.
Here's how she looks with the cluster lense installed...You cannot notice any kind of modifications from the outside..The need can be adjusted for a different starting point by just turning a little cam on the backside of the magnet on the guage. The needle right now sits a bit higher than the other bottomed out gauges. Not really that noticable at all.
This is at 12.75 volts...Like I mentioned you can adjust the needle starting point on the voltmeter... I set mine up to read like this being the powermaster puts out a regulated 13.2 volts and that should center the needle in the gauge. Also being the studs are a bit undersized for the holes, you can twist the unit one way or another when loosing it up from the backside and tweek the needle to meet center if need be
Here's the back...The heat shrink runs right up to the top of the nut. It also slides through the through wall grommets in the bracket, thus no arc's. The bracket came with the voltmeter for securing the gauge in a housing, I just cut off the ends. I'll probably dabble on some liquid electical tape on the bracket around the washers as well. Like mentioned, the through wall grommets work great for protecting a short.. I'll run another nut on top and a star washer to secure the wires.
A good idea to do on the backside is write on a + and -, being the positive is opposite what the factory has stamped on the back of the case. I also indicated the change over seeing you never know if the car may fall in someone eles hands someday.. I will take the two original wires that use to run to the ammeter, solder them together and heat shrink over. I also plan on drilling out the male/female connection in the bulhead for the wire coming in, run the wire straight through, solder together and heat shrink install a inline fuse.
So there it is.......If you were thinking about spending the $150-$200 after shipping with Redline (nothing against them), here's another option where you'll spend about $17 bucks on the voltmeter and maybe an hour or two depending on your skill level. I know for me this really gives me a good piece of mind I don't have to worry about any issues in that area any more. Hope it helps some one out someday....
imp_daddy:
