New Instrument Voltage Regulator (IVR) Idea

Check this out. I used it on a non Mopar recently. It is an adjustable voltage regulator. You can set it wherever you want to fine tune your gauges, or use one for each gauge if you want to do a little rewiring. No soldering required. You can stake the adjustment screw with a little paint to keep it from moving.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.............................

I like your out of the box thinking but...


IMHO
Buying a propper IVR from:
MOPAR Products

Plug and play, for many dash's, no recreating the wheel, plus the added benifet of gauge protections.

Adjusting the voltage to adjust the gauges is asking for problems.

Dana67Dart said:

I like your out of the box thinking but...


IMHO
Buying a propper IVR from:
MOPAR Products

Plug and play, for many dash's, no recreating the wheel, plus the added benifet of gauge protections.

Adjusting the voltage to adjust the gauges is asking for problems.

Click to expand...

None of those work as a drop in for a rally dash. You are pretty much stuck with improvising there anyway. This thing would allow you to do it without soldering a 7805 for those who don’t do that regularly.

All the dc-dc converters I have seen are current limited. The very design of them limits the current, if not explicitly stated.

I found this one when I was looking for one that was 10 volts for an old triumph I bought that has been SBC swapped. This car will take some improvising to get the gauges working right.

This is Chineseium, so I don’t really know if it will last. However I used a different Chinese dc-dc on my cuda that has been going for a few years without issue.

I agree that changing the voltage too much might involve some risk, but 4-6 volts shouldn’t bother anything, and there few options to adjust the gauge readings if they aren’t exact. I have seen folks use 7806 regulators to get gauges reading closer.

This is of course, a buyer beware solution. Being a cheapskate, I like the lower cost solutions.

Mike69cuda said:

None of those work as a drop in for a rally dash. You are pretty much stuck with improvising there anyway

Click to expand...

Agreed about the rally dash. But they have instructions on how to do it with one of their IVRs

The back of at least the non ralley gauges had two adjustments to move the needle.

I played a bit but did not try to make one accurite with power and resisters applied yet.

One seems to adjust the low setting and the other I suspect the upper setting.

Note the teeth on the silver arms, one at 10:00 and the other at 5:00

This is the one I used on my cuda.

I like this, Much cheaper than some of the other options ( yeah they are not a plug & play replacement , but Im ok with a little work ).
this will come in handy for a 1954 Merc I am re wiring and converting to 12v. should allow me to retain the factory gauges.

You can buy the same thing in pcb format without the case for much cheaper. Or if you want to build your own, look into a LM317 adjustable VR. Its the same TO-220 package as the 7805 everyone is using but can be set to a wide range of voltages with a few resistors or a pot in circuit. The datasheet should have sample schematics.

I used one on my 1964 Valiant, 1965 Dart, and 1965 Newport. First one was sold on ebay as "Plymouth Voltage Limiter" for ~$30. The others were from Amazon as general DC supplies for maybe $10. They looked identical to the ebay one. One might have been non-adjustable and only $8. Adjustable is better since you can tweak the voltage to get either your fuel gage or temp sensor to read perfectly (not both) at full-scale (or zero). I had to add ~20 ohm in parallel w/ the dash fuel gage to get it to read correctly with my new level sender (in bench test), after tweaking output to ~6 VDC. The gages also have screwdriver mechanical adjustments for zero and span, but intended only for experts in the factory, though I figured them out. Be careful since they bend metal parts.