Bypassing Amp Meter for Volt Meter

[Bruzilla]

I was tearing down the 73 Town & Country wagon I got for a parts doner and found something interesting. Sometime over the years, someone had taken the wires off the factory amp meter, soldered on extensions to them, and ran them out the Volt meter of a a Stewart Warner gauge cluster. I guess it worked for them.

 

[747mopar]

Hmmmmm, all the current for the whole entire car minus the starter should have ran threw the ammeter where a voltmeter just needs a 12V supply to read voltage.... sounds sketchy to me?

 

[440+6]

Then the volt meter would be active all the time, normally you would wire the volt meter to switched ignition power.

 

[Bruzilla]

Hmmmmm, all the current for the whole entire car minus the starter should have ran threw the ammeter where a voltmeter just needs a 12V supply to read voltage.... sounds sketchy to me?

That's how I would have installed it. If I were going to skip the amp meter, I would just remove the wires and fuse them. This is the first time I've seen someone wire up a volt meter like this.

 

[super-bee_ski]

Yup,
I agree....
I've seen it too.

 

[65RoadRacer]

Yeah, that sounds real sketchy to me, too. I wouldn't think that it would work because a voltmeter needs to see hot and ground. It might have been working as an ammeter instead of a volt gauge. The wires to and from and ammeter are essentially the same wire; you can connect them together to bypass the ammeter and not cause any issues. If one side of the voltmeter is connected, the other side would have to connect to ground to read actual voltage.

 

[383man]

That's how I would have installed it. If I were going to skip the amp meter, I would just remove the wires and fuse them. This is the first time I've seen someone wire up a volt meter like this.

Yes as am amp meter gets hooked in series and the volt meter is hooked in parralell. And the volt meter should use ign key on volts. Ron