67 Dart: Temp and gas gauges dead.

[Kern Dog]

Hello,
I have a 67 Dart that will be getting a fresh 360 in about a month or so and I want to get the car ready for the transplant.

For awhile now, the temperature and fuel gauges have not worked. I need to get at least the temp gauge working for this new engine. The new one is a 1990 roller cam mill so at least if it doesn’t start immediately, the cam will be fine. I do have an oil pressure gauge.
Back on point.
My electrical skills are limited. I’m okay with most mechanical stuff but I really struggle with electrical matters.
To date, I have tested both the wire to the temp sender and the fuel sender. In both cases, I took a jumper wire and clamped the terminal inside the wire plug and grounded the other end of the wire. I recall that this was one way to see if the gauge moves. In both cases, the gauges did not move.
Next I pulled the panel out enough to swap in another voltage limiter. No change.
I swapped in another panel, no change.

The dash wiring looks good. No damage. The terminal plugs to the pins are in great shape. The engine side wiring is seasoned but still looks okay. I pulled the bulkhead plugs and cleaned the terminals.
No change.
I took my original panel and a standard car battery:

For the gas gauge, I momentarily touched the battery terminals and…

Then the temp….

These work, maybe the ones in the car work too so what else is there?

 

[Kern Dog]

The fuel sender is a reproduction and it did work when I installed it several years ago. I don’t remember when the temp gauge quit working. I don’t drive this car much.

 

[4fortyDemon]

Isn't the go to when those 2 guages fail is the oblong resistor that has 2 or 3 prongs. Plugs into the back of the printed board. Im sure someone will chime in and affirm or correct me.

 

[Kern Dog]

The voltage limiter.

I’ve found out these fit all A-B-E cars.

I did try one first. No change.

 

[4fortyDemon]

The voltage limiter.

View attachment 1716409647

I’ve found out these fit all A-B-E cars.

View attachment 1716409648

View attachment 1716409649

Yes! Thank you. I took the long way to explain what I meant... typical. Ask my friends and family...lol

 

[fishmens67]

he voltage limiter.

I thought the voltage regulator was part of the fuel gauge in 67 and didn't use that style limiter

 

[Kern Dog]

Shoot, man…I don’t know.
I’ve had this car since 2005 but am not as familiar with the wiring and dash stuff in this car as I am with the 70s era A bodies. I got it running in 2005 and have maybe 1000 miles on it since then. I use it mostly for driving on dirt trails and spinning around off road. I haven’t had it more than 20 miles from home in a long time. It is time to get stuff working though. I’m even toying with repainting it the original color.

That or turbine bronze like those 60s experimental turbine cars.

 

[67Dart273]

No 67 plugs in. Also the finger contacts into which it plugs may not be making contact with the traces on the board. Clean them, flux and solder jumpers from the contact fingers to the board traces.

Take the gauge nuts and loosen/ tighten them 3/4 times to "scrub" corrosion off.

There are several things you should do while troubleshooting this

Examine the harness connector pins, which are sort of riveted to the board. If they seem the slightest loose, clean them up, use a flux suitible for electronics, and solder them.

If you do not have a source for a suitable flux, this stuff is not bad. They also sell liquid flux in "flux pens" but it is more expensive. This stuff is "waxy," you just clean up the joint and with a small screwdriver, etc, spread a little bit on. Also be sure to use electronic rated solder, and I would use lead / tin solder, rather than silver. Make SURE that the solder ALSO has electronics compatible (rosin) flux AND NOT ACID CORE

Pardon Our Interruption...

Find a common ground point on the board and install a pigtail so you can "for certain" ground the board by bolting the pigtail to the column support/ dash frame.

If you have anything for a rheostat, such as a spare gas sender, you can set it to certain resistances and test the gauges. They all have the same sender resistance for far left, middle, and far right on the gauges

Here's an aftermarket gauge tester someone edited to show sender resistances against expected readings

If you do not have a service manual, there are both OEM service manuals and aftermarket wiring diagrams, over at MyMopar.com, for free. Some of the guys here got some of those over there

 

[Kern Dog]

Thanks. Keep in mind that while some terminology seems simple to some of us, guys like me don’t immediately understand.
The gauges moved when tested out of the car. Why wouldn’t they work when mounted in place?

 

[4fortyDemon]

No 67 plugs in. Also the finger contacts into which it plugs may not be making contact with the traces on the board. Clean them, flux and solder jumpers from the contact fingers to the board traces.

Take the gauge nuts and loosen/ tighten them 3/4 times to "scrub" corrosion off.

There are several things you should do while troubleshooting this

Examine the harness connector pins, which are sort of riveted to the board. If they seem the slightest loose, clean them up, use a flux suitible for electronics, and solder them.

Find a common ground point on the board and install a pigtail so you can "for certain" ground the board by bolting the pigtail to the column support/ dash frame.

If you have anything for a rheostat, such as a spare gas sender, you can set it to certain resistances and test the gauges. They all have the same sender resistance for far left, middle, and far right on the gauges

Here's an aftermarket gauge tester someone edited to show sender resistances against expected readings

If you do not have a service manual, there are both OEM service manuals and aftermarket wiring diagrams, over at MyMopar.com, for free. Some of the guys here got some of those over there

This!! ^^^^^ great advice!

 

[Kern Dog]

I’ll give it a try.

I backed off every speed nut and screw that went through both circuit boards.

This is the panel that was in the car
The oil light does not work because I used the oil pressure port for the gauge.
Dinner time now so maybe tomorrow I can see if this helps.
Thanks, Del!

 

[67Dart273]

Thanks. Keep in mind that while some terminology seems simple to some of us, guys like me don’t immediately understand.
The gauges moved when tested out of the car. Why wouldn’t they work when mounted in place?

If you fed it power as it normally should have been, the ignition "run" line to the cluster, the gauges run off the IVR. If it's bad, it would not feed power to the gauges. Not sure, otherwise, unless, just bad connection. As I said the studs can lose contact with the board traces, as well

 

[Kern Dog]

Del wrote this in another thread.....

Common problems:

Voltage limiter. Buy a RTE solid state one
Bad connections between limiter contact fingers (if this is not a Ralleye dash) and the PC board traces. Solder jumpers across

Bad connections at gauge stud nuts. Loosen/ tighten nuts several times to "scrub" the connections clean, and consider replacing nuts

Solder around base of harness pins after cleaning, inspect for damage.

The electrical "path" for the gauges is ignition switch----harness connector pin----to voltage limiter---branch off and PC board trace feeds power to each gauge. Through each gauge, then back on traces to harness connector pins, and out to senders. Fuel gauge goes down to left kick panel connector, out to fuel tank, temp goes through a terminal in the bulkhead connector and out to temp sender

You can use resistors or a variable / rheostat to generate proper test resistances to check gague accuracy.

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View attachment 1716033721

The part that states the "electrical path" may be where my problem lies. I can power up the gauges externally but they don't seem to power up the way that Del described.
I don't know how to test the limiters that I have here. I have several gauge clusters to pick from.

 

[RustyRatRod]

Doesn't the cluster ground through the bezel mounting screws? That's been somewhat a point of contention for some. I always run a separate and good size ground wire. Just a thought.

 

[Dana67Dart]

Watch this video then reread the answers in your post.



The IVR is a voltage limiter it is not a resuster.The IVR is ONLY in the fuel gauge on ralley type clusters.

 

[Kern Dog]

Doesn't the cluster ground through the bezel mounting screws? That's been somewhat a point of contention for some. I always run a separate and good size ground wire. Just a thought.

I thought it grounded through the dash frame and the screws too. The ammeter has it's own power going through it so I can't include that in my confusion.

 

[Dana67Dart]

Did you watch the video?

 

[Kern Dog]

Video or film strip?

Heck yeah I did. It took me back to grade school before video cassette players became the standard. Before that, we had overhead projectors and the filmstrips with the BEEP at the end of each segment. THANK you for that!
It makes sense. From the 15 minute section to around 17 minutes, it pertained to exactly what I'm seeing here. Having two gauges dead points to a bad voltage limiter. Like I mentioned before, I wish I knew how to test the ones I have here. I'm not against buying a new one but if I already have one here, I'd like to use it.

 

[Dana67Dart]

Having two gauges dead points to a bad voltage limiter. Like I mentioned before, I wish I knew how to test the ones I have here. I'm not against buying a new one but if I already have one here, I'd like to use

Take an IVR and ground it's housing to the negative of the your 12v power source.

Then after determining which terminal is the 12v in, connect that to the positive of your 12v power source.

Hook a small 12v bulb to the output terminal of the IVR and the negative terminal on your power source, you should see the bulb flash on and off .



Just a note...

I was a firm believer of oem parts. So I kept my OEM thermal electric IVR and fried my fuel gauge when it failed closed and fed 12v to my gauges.

I now have a RTE IVR and will never look back

 

[67Dart273]

I was going to recommend an RTE

The gauges either to jig up or normal operation are powered from one of the pins on the cluster board connector. That pin (memory) feeds 12V "run" to the oil and brake lamps, and to the power terminal of the IVR. Cluster must be grounded, even for testing, as the IVR has a ground.

Then the sender terminal of each gauge can be grounded BRIEFLY for a quick test, or connect the proper test resistor to get 1/2 or full scale, etc.

I would for certain check the harness connector pins, on the board, for loose, corossion, etc, busted/ burned up board traces, bad IVR, or no or poor connection from the IVR contact fingers to the board traces.

The functional path is 12V "run" to the PC board proper pin, board trace to the IVR power, pulse power out of the IVR on trace to both gages, through each gauge, out each gauge on the sender studs, that a board trace for each, oil and temp, going to the board's harness pin for that sender.

I know you can, or could get repop boards, and mine had broken pins. Rather than screw with them, back then Rad Shack was in business, so I just bought a couple of Molex plugs they had there, and wired them up in place of the original pins, soldering pigtals to scraped spots on the varous board traces.

Also don't forget your lighting. Pull the lamps, use an eraser to scrub the copper at the lamp socket contacts, clean the socket contact fingers, and bend them if necessary for better contact. I would say replace the lamps if you can get some good ones, who knows, anymore??

 

[Kern Dog]

I have a hard time understanding this stuff...It looks like the first sentence below is written wrong:

Take an IVR and ground it's housing to the negative of the you 12v power source.

Then after determining which terminal is the 12v in connect that to the positive of your 12v power source.

Hook a small 12v bulb to the output terminal and the negative terminal on your power source you should see the bulb flash on and off .



Just a note...

I was a firm believer of oem parts. So I kept my OEM thermal electric IVR and fried my fuel gauge when it failed closed and fed 12v to my gauges.

I now have a RTE IVR and will never look back

..."ground it's housing to the negative of the you 12v....."
I don't know what that means. I am not criticizing grammar or spelling here. Maybe you meant to ground housing to the negative of "your" 12v power source ?

I am not sure what the RTE is either. Is that an improved design? A guy at FBBO posted a link to this:

 

[70SwingerGuy]

I am not sure what the RTE is either. Is that an improved design?

I think what they are referring to is the manufacturer of the ivr, Real Time Engineering, here is the link:
RTE limiter - rte

 

[Dana67Dart]

ground housing to the negative of "your" 12v power source

Yes, fat fingered it.

 

[Kern Dog]

Heck yeah…. The Drat has working gauges again!
Thanks to Dana and Del, the stuff you guys suggested probably made the difference. Some of it anyway.
First, I tested a limiter on the table as directed and got fluctuating numbers on the multimeter, just like it is supposed to.
I put the limiter in the original cluster after cleaning all the contact points. I put the cluster in the car and saw the fuel gauge needle move slightly.
Hmm….

I pulled the sender and found this:

A tear in the float. It was half full of fuel. I grabbed a good used one from the stash and tested it in a bowl of water.
No bubbles.
Back together, the fuel gauge moved right away. There is maybe three gallons in the tank.

This dude reads with so little fuel in the tank? That is better than my nicer car!
Ten minutes or less and this is what I’m getting:

Score!
In short, corrosion on the terminals was probably responsible for the gauges not working but the fuel sender float should have been checked earlier to rule it out.thanks again, guys.

 

[Dana67Dart]

Btw. If it's an aftermarket sender it will read full too long then empty too long.

When it first gets to The E range you will probably have about a 1/2 tank left.