Hey, I put a 1950 Buick on a 94 roadmaster chassis. I want to use the 1950 buick guages. Any advice on wiring the ampmeter, and gas guage to work with the 94? Im using the mechanical oil and temp guages. Also the speedometer uses a cable, and the 94 trans is electronic. Any ideas on what is needed to get a cable attatchement to the modern trans. Thanks, Ken
Amp meters don't care about voltage. Gas gauges have to be mated to the sending units ohm's resistance. That can be hard to do. Don't have any answer for your speedo cable although I think I read a post about some sort of adapter here. Use the search function.
Rewire the ammeter as a voltmeter, since it probably won't handle the 100+ amp output from the alternator anyways. The speedo either has to be replaced, or a fairly expensive converter installed to run the stock one. Alternately one could have it rebuilt with electronic guts (90-96 GM vans might be a source for the guts as they have a round electronic speedometer). For that matter, a 1994 Buick is going to have a 4L60E trans - electronic controls - it HAS to have the electronic speedometer output - so I hope you kept the computer and electronic engine controls. I suppose you could swap in a 700R4, which should be a bolt-in and can be had with a cable speedometer drive, too.
I have installed an alternator and 12V battery on my 51 Buick. I needed a new gas tank and sending unit. The sending unit instructions said it was good for 6 or 12 volts. So far it seems to work well with the 6v gas gauge. I'm not a mechanic or electrical engineer, but I rewired the ammeter as 12v. The needle rides dead center. Granted, I have a low output alternator and only driven during the daylight. Am I in for trouble when I load up the electrical system??? I thought as volts went up, amps go down?
What? Rewire the ammeter as a voltmeter? An ammeter requires VERY low voltage for full deflection in either direction. If you remove the shunt and put 12 volts across the terminals, the meter will peg, and probably burn out the winding in a matter of milliseconds. If you don't remove the shunt, and put 12 volts across it, you are going to have a VERY HIGH current going through the ammeter, until something burns up. Are there other options that I am not aware of? I'd really be interested in how either of you rewired the ammeter as a voltmeter. A schematic drawing of how you wired it would be helpful.
I think he meant he rewired the ammeter to work on the 12V negative ground and alternator. I agree that making the ammeter a voltmeter is certainly somewhat difficult, but can be done. A simple approach would be to scale the ammeter with a shunt resistor across it. However the meter would only read on one side or the other depending on how it is wired. Now to the speedo -- 1st suggestion- use one of the front wheels for the speedo drive. 2nd suggestion, figure out how to drive the speedo from the drive shaft. 3rd suggestion, use the transmission speed sensor output and run the output through a scaling amplifier that then drives a motor, which in turn drives the speedo. 1st - easiest 2nd - Difficult 3rd - Technically inclined only!
Had a voltage regulator stick once in a car with an ammeter. Guess what wires were fried right up to the cluster and damn near caught on fire before I just cut off the cable at the by then glowing battery terminal? If you guessed ammeter, you win 50 internetz.
so for all those guys that run transmissions with speedo cable outputs but want to have a electronic speedometer, what would be the name of the part you would need to do that?
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&output...f.,cf.osb&fp=92012027ea7e328b&biw=905&bih=589 1,160,000 results....
I see lots of posts of going from electronic to mechanical but what about going from mechanical to electronic example: I have a 700R4 with a mechanical speedo cable in the tail shaft but i don't want to run a mechanical speedo cable. I want to run an electronic gauge. Does something like that even exist?
I converted my 1950 special to 12 V with a chevy 100 Amp Alternator---I just drew a new wire to the am meter with np so far and has driven it like this for 3 years now.......There is a company in sweden thats sells a small resistor circuit for the fuel guage for a couple of bucks ..... http://www.pip.o.se/produkt/Omvandlare-12volt-till-6volt but i am sure that thoose can be purchased all over the world...
I will try that. One wire from the battery to a post on the ammeter, where does the other wire on the back of the ammeter go?
I made a circuit from the alternator output to through the amp meter to the battery positive... My ampmeter shows a high reading when the battery recives charge but i think that is correct because the alternator charges more than the old generator. When the battery is fully charged the ampmeter stays just above neutral. Make sure that you use cables with correct area.....
coolforschool58: Those adapters are available, (manual to electric) at companies that sell electronic speedometers. Speedway motors has an autometer sending unit for $79.99
Can you take the sending unit from the old tank and install it in the new? Is the new car digital on the gas gauge? Send your amp meter to one of the instrument company's they will make it a volt meter. they will also convert your speedo to electronic. piece of cake.
I have not done mine yet, but from what I have read the ammeter does'nt know 12v from 6v amps so it should work as is. also for your fuel guage you need a resistor called a "RUNTZ" they sell on E-Bay for 3 or 4 bucks
Your gauges are probably similar to mine. See posts 5 and 36. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=562350 Except for the speedo, I went through the same thing you are talking about. I started to document all my steps and parts, but then someone finished a tech post on the same thing while I was in the middle of the project so I tossed it. Regardless, you might just want to gut them and replace one or more of the gauges to suit your needs. I bought all new single gauges. 60 degree faces with top or bottom orientation, depending on original location. Opened up the original housings and replaced. I was going to paint the needles, but since all the new ones were orange, I left them. ammeter- will measure direction and amount of current. voltage won't really matter, except in the context of it's relationship to the current and your particular ammeter. There's no good way to make it read 12v of which I'm aware. I didn't like the idea of wiring up an ammeter anyways, so I replaced with 12 v gauge. temp- its a capillary tube, and doesn't care about your elec. but you'll need to be able to able to mount the bulb on your motor. if it won't you can replace, or try to spliced a new tube to your old gauge (there's a link to the tech article in my post) oil- like the temp gauge, it won't care about volts gas- a little more tricky. As said, gauge and sending unit must have same ohm range and voltage. It may be as simple as using a shunt inline to step the circuit down to 6v if you use your 1950 tank. If you use your later tank, I'd find out the ohm range then pick out an aftermarket gauge with the same specs and retrofit in your cluster. clock- I'm going to try a shunt to step down to 6v. If that doesn't work I'm leaving it alone.
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