Good morning I recently bought a 52/53 Kaiser speedo and gauges for my custom 47 Kaiser. My question for you guys are what is the box on the back of the gauges? Its on the bottom left hand corner on the first picture and it says IGN on it but im not sure what it should be hooked up to. Can you guys please give me a hand with this one?
Looks like a voltage regulator. Were the 52/53 12 volt? Not sure about Kaiser, but Ford kept the gauges at 6 volts, up into the '70's at least, so they put a voltage drop in the gauge cluster. If you run a 6 volt generator you can bypass and wire directly to the gauges. If you are converting to 12, then run the IGN wire to the reg, and the gauges from the other tab. The Ford ones don't actually supply 6 volts, they just turn the power on and off. 12 volts for half the time. The gauges respond slowly enough that they read as if they had 6 volts. If you put a volt meter on it you get a confusing pulsing output.
^^^ What he said. it looks like the vibrator type that does not supply a constant voltage...so I agree it likely will pulse.
Wire the IGN tab to 12 V, then use a voltmeter from the other tab to ground. An analog meter will bounce between 0-12, a digital may just give random readings, not sure. A fancy one may have a setting to damp a variable reading and give the average. A test light should flicker and not get as bright as it would on 12V.
As long as we are talking Kaiser instruments, I am using this same cluster in my Model A. My question is, what can I put in line on the amp gauge so that a say, an 80 amp alternator won't peg it? Tom...
If the ampmeter is wired properly, it doesn't really read the output of the alt, only if the battery is charging or discharging. Pegging it would mean the alternator is dead, and you are running a lot of electrical accessories, or the battery was near dead and is recharging. I think adding any sort of current limiter or resistor would interfere with the charging of the battery.
They trip in and out like a signal light flasher, so like a flasher, it needs a load applied to pulse. A test light should be enough of a load. An analog meter might not??
For those who want to use there stock 6v gauges with 12v system the napa number for the ford voltage drop NAPA PART NUMBER IR1 Around $25 to $30
And for those of you that want to save a lot of money, head over to the tech archives and learn how to make a voltage reducer for about $3... Kaiser, I also believe it's an add-on electro-mechanical voltage regulator. It is unlikely that you will damage the gauges if you briefly run too much voltage through them, though they very well will give you the wrong readings!
A lot of these old cars had very sparse circuit protection, as in fuses. But man had a 30 amp circuit breaker ( auto reset type) that protected 90 % of the electrics that were not headlights. What in a modern car would be the main bus or the main distribution block protected by a fuseable link. The light switches usually had a 20 or 30 amp fuse integrile to the assembly, for short protection the headlamp, tail lamp, stop light circuit. So my guess is, that since its from a pre 12V car, it might be that main circuit breaker, wired from the ammeter out through the CB, to the ign switch in. And since it is mounted near the Ammeter, it would make it short wire to go from amp out to breaker to ign switch.
That's actually a pretty neat thought. Generally, though, circuit breakers and fuseable links are placed as close as possible to the source. If you look at the posts on it, you'll also notice how small they are. Compare them to the leads on a starter relay and you'll probably agree that they aren't meant to carry that much load. I also think the patina on the little box is just slightly different than the rest of the cluster, suggesting that it was installed later. Kaiser would have to varify that to be certain.
Willys trucks like the one in my avatar used a "voltage regulator" to supply the gas and temperature gauges.This is on a 6 volt system.Willys and Kaiser use common parts and sourced gauges from several manufacturers from what I understand. You might want to check Willys Jeep forums for more info?
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