Got a couple gauge wiring questions

[Money_pit]

I got a 71c10 gauge harness in truck. I removed all factory gauges and installed all autometer electric gauges. I am gonna put a molex connector in so I can make this gauge cluster easily removable. My questions are there seems to be 2 gas gauge wires my gauge only requires one which one do I use? Also there is 2 wires one for alternator and one from junction block by battery I think # 1 and 12 in connector can I hook up alternator wire to my new voltmeter? And where does the wire from junction block go or is it even needed?
Sorry for the long post electrical isn't a friend of mine
Thanks in adavnce

[VetteVet]

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Originally Posted by Money_pit

I got a 71c10 gauge harness in truck. I removed all factory gauges and installed all autometer electric gauges. I am gonna put a molex connector in so I can make this gauge cluster easily removable. My questions are there seems to be 2 gas gauge wires my gauge only requires one which one do I use?

The stock gauge uses a pink wire for power and a tan wire for the sender. It also has a feed wire with the pink wire to power the temperature gauge. It must be grounded to the cluster and the cluster has to be grounded to the dash. Are you planning on running wires to the gauges are using the stock circuit board?




Also there is 2 wires one for alternator and one from junction block by battery I think # 1 and 12 in connector can I hook up alternator wire to my new voltmeter? And where does the wire from junction block go or is it even needed?

These two wires feed the stock battery gauge which is not a voltmeter, so you can not use both of them on the true voltmeter which measures system voltage. These wires carry positive voltage on both and a voltmeter has to have one positive and one negative wire. They each have a small 4 amp fuse in line to protect the gauge.

What you could do is take the wire at the alternator junction and move it to a ground point for the negative side of the voltmeter. The one on the battery junction side would go to the positive side of the gauge.

This would make the gauge hot all the time so you would have to run the positive wire through a key on terminal, such as the IGN UNFUSED terminal on the fuse panel.

The easy way to connect the voltmeter, is to run the positive side to the fuel gauge power wire and the negative side to the cluster panel. This would give the VM the key on power it needs. Then you could remove the two black wires.


Sorry for the long post electrical isn't a friend of mine
Thanks in adavnce

[Money_pit]

Thanks VetteVet for shedding some light on this. I've got the printed circuit board all removed and trying to locate molex connectors to make this easily removable. Basically what I currently have is a duplicate of your top pic minus all the wires, would is make sense to put a 4 amp fuse in the key on power for these gauges and then another for the light power? I just want to make sure my gauges are all protected

[VetteVet]

Well if you're going to use the wires in the harness, the pink one and the gray one are the two feed wires for the gauges and the instrument lights. They are fused at the fuse panel by the 3 amp fuses in the cluster feed fuse and the Pnl Lts fuse. Your problem will be mating them to the wires that you have going to the gauges and the instrument lights. Your gauges may have their own lights like the ones in the picture I posted so it should be easy to sort those out.

Attachment 1471376

The blue arrow on the left is slightly off the fuse. The wires in the picture are not the feed wires for the cluster and lights.





When you pull out the headlight knob, the orange wire from the fuse panel that goes to the headlight switch, connects to a green wire from the variable resistor (dimmer) in the knob, which feeds power back to the Pnl Lts fuse in the fuse panel, and to the gray wire from there back to the cluster plug.

[Money_pit]

Thanks for all the help.VetteVet gonna try to tackle this weekend