Ammeter Rewire Question.

[wsutard]

Recently my voltage regulator took a dump and caused an over charging situation that melted my alternator to ammeter wire inside the cab. This has given me an "excuse" to rewire the engine bay and upsize the alternator wire to 8ga.

As part of this rewire I am thinking of doing a "partial ammeter bypass". What I mean by this is I want to do the MAD Electric Ammeter Bypass but instead of disconnecting the Ammeter and splicing together the red and black, I want to run new wires to the Ammeter and use it to power the factory harness.

Here is the scenario followed by a picture. I will run my alternator wire directly to the bat + on the starter relay. I will also run two new wires from the bat + on the relay to each side of the Ammeter. I will keep the factory connections at the Ammeter so the harness will be powered.

I want to do this for two reasons. 1. I don't want to splice into the factory harness again due to lack of splicable wire and creating another weak spot. 2. I cant get behind the Ammeter to create a proper splice via the MAD Electrical directions.

Last summer I had the cluster refreshed and an upgraded Ammeter installed. According to the company who installed the Ammeter, it is far superior to the original and can handle much larger loads.

Thoughts, questions, clarifications?

 

[wsutard]

Nevermind. I'm not going to bypass the ammeter

 

[Nacho-RT74]

http://www.dodgecharger.com/forum/index.php?topic=33574.0

 

[Xp29h]

Good call on complete bypass!

 

[Matthew Maloney]

I dunno. I did complete bypass and converted my ammeter to volts using the guts from a sunpro 2" volt gage . Added a 12V LED fault light to it too. I am running a mini denso 50A alternator that has a spot for a fault light connection, and 8 ga output wire with a fusible link at the battery end. I added flexable green 5630 dimmable LED light strip to the inside of the cluster housing as well. No more dim lit spots.

The problem with the whole ammeter concept is not the ammeter itself, rather the bulkhead connector. As these connections get older and conduct less because of age and corrosion, the amperage starts to spike at the old corroded connector, and viola the magic smoke gets let out.

Something wacky about running full alternator output current thru a bulkhead connector like that. It was marginal in its day when these vehicles were new. I will be doing these upgrades to every old mopar that eventually runs thru my hands.

 

[Nacho-RT74]

Click on the link to the thread I posted

 

[Tori]

That lighting looks fantastic. I see the 5630 LED strips on eBay, They don't mention anything about being dimmable. Does it just naturally dim with less voltage ?

In the pic, is that at full brightness ?

 

[Matthew Maloney]

Thanks for the Kudos. It lights very unifotm over all the gages at night. Pic above is shown with a 9v battery clipped to it. I was able to get these to barely light with a 1.5V battery, so yes they are dimmable. Incredibly efficient, you will likely run them with your dimmer switch turned only half way up.

Its dirt cheap too. I got 5 meters of the non water proof uncoated strip (about 13 feet) shipped for about $7

 

[Tori]

Thanks Matt !

http://www.forbbodiesonly.com/moparforum/threads/led-dash-lighting.136711/#post-910753254