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Electical Guru Opinion Needed????
I'm in the final stage of completly rewiring my car and have a question regarding the grounding of the gauge lamps.
The Stewart Warner 2 5/8" AMP gauge has a stud on the back (3rd stud marked "Grd") that I have attached the ground wires (18 gage) from the 7 gauge lamps to. From the stud I have a 12 gage wire going to the chassis ground. Is there any reason this would not be acceptable? Thanks.........Rick |
Rick ,
A # 12 wire will carry all the instrument lights you care to connect,including a small christmas tree . But if it were me i would wire my lamps in series accross the gauges and ground from the ends to keep from stacking eight terminals. |
I'd recommend running the ground wires to a stud behind the dash somewhere, not on the gauge. The setup you're talking about will work, but I wouldn't want all that current on the back of the gauge looking for a ground if your #12 failed for some reason. I don't know what your dash material is. If it's aluminum, then there shouldn't be a problem even then.
I have to respectfully disagree, in personal preference only, to wiring the grounds all together, inseperably (if indeed, I understood Karl correctly). I very much like to be able to replace wires one at a time, and want failure modes to be independant. Of course, I have been worked with a lot of vintage Lucas, and this might have made me unreasonably paranoid! I also like to add a couple of cigarette lighter sockets up under the dash out of sight. Wal-Mart sells them, and they come in very handy at times. |
Thanks guys! Keep the thoughts coming.........
The sole reason for using the existing stud was to keep the back of the aluminum panel "clean" in lieu of having a mass of spagetti behind the dash, and it was a centralized location. I like the idea of a removable power socket for cell phone. Maybe a compact plug in lieu of a cigarette lighter socket. Rick |
Steve/Rick,
I would never power source instruments in series for just the reasons you mentioned ,it makes trouble shooting just that much more complicated and i wouldnt want the monitors for my engine to be that vulnerable. That said ,what I was suggesting was to NOT stack 7 or 8 terminal ends on the back of a meter ,but to jumper just the lamps and ground to the chassis from each end for some redundancy. of course a ground lead for each lamp does make for easy trouble shooting ,but does not offer the "backup" ground lead on the other hand my common sense says I should probably defer to any of the Kirkhams when it comes to things Cobra :) |
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Rick, I wired mine as kobrakarl suggested, should a light go bad, it has no effect on the others.
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