I'm starting to pull my hair out with the guages i just installed.
I've put guages in my brothers corvette and all 7 work perfectly!
Different story for mine.
I dont know what it is, other then it must be something simple and stupid.
I just spent all day yesterday after work and all day today working on these things.

Ok, I wired them up, and they're swinging the whole range when you turn the car on, they're going nuts.
It seems like a ground, but i'm pretty sure i have a good ground, unless one of my connections didnt work.

Try grounding the guages to the block. If you grounded under the dash, stray currents in the electrical system can cause the guages to freak out a bit. The sensors are grounded to the block, so grounding the guages there will eliminate a lot of noise. You could try installing a jumper for a test to see if it is worth the hassle.

-dnult

tried grounding to the battery with a jumper, didnt help.
Me thinks i got bum guages.

You may be right about the guages, but the battery is not a better place for ground in the case of guages. Basically what that would do is introduce just about every possible current in the vehicle into your guage circuit. At least the igition and chargine currents. I'd ground to the block before dooming the guages. Ideally all sensors would have two wires connected - a hot and a return. This way you could completely isolate grounds to your instruments. But that's not the way the general chose to do it unfortunately.

-dnult

-dnult

thanks,
this is quit dishearting to have such problems. They've kinda all stacked up against me today.
Between that and the shifter i'm working on.
Geeze, I'm going back at it tomorrow.

One thing to keep in mind with electrical gauge's and chassis battery relocation's (I assume that you have relocated the battery in this chassis) that grounding is of the utmost importance when you run into problems.

You should have a ground from the battery to:
The rear frame rail.
One from the rear unitized chassis to the front subframe.
One from the front subframe to the engine block.

You can omit the one from the rear unitized chassis to the front subframe if you have 'welded' subframe connectors.

To narrow it down to a gauge problem, disconnect one gauge at a time to see if the problem goes away when you disconnect that gauge alone by itself. Repeat with other gauges and remember to reconnect the last gauge that you disconnected so that you are only making one change at a time.

But a swept reading problem sounds like it is going to be either ground related or a possible internal short to ground from a bad gauge.

Good luck, and let us know homie.

thanks tom.
I have the battery in the stock location.
I think part of the problem is that i need to sit back and recollect myself for a few.
I'll let you know tomorrow.
Brian

I tried grounding my fuel gauge to the battery and it did a full sweep...the needle ended up way past full with 1/2 tank of gas. I grounded it to the body (with a GOOD ground) and it worked fine.

It would seem unlikely that all gauges are bad. What brand/types have you installed? Are they off a common ground? Are they in a console/under dash/in dash?

Originally posted by MangeMD:
I tried grounding my fuel gauge to the battery and it did a full sweep...the needle ended up way past full with 1/2 tank of gas. I grounded it to the body (with a GOOD ground) and it worked fine. The only difference being that a gas tank sensor is less than 90 ohms, whereas temp and oil pressure are as high as 2000 ohms. The higher resistance sensors are going to be more sensitive to grounding issues.

-dnult

they are autometer sport comp guages, mounted under dash.
The two guages have a common ground, but it is seperate from the lights and my tach.
i'm going to fool around with them today.