Please Read: Voltmeter for Ammeter

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speedog24

speedog24

Mopar Lover
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Alright, It's been a little while since I have been on here, but now I need some help. Or hopefully some of you do. I am currently working on restoring the Instrument Cluster for my 74 Dart I'm restoring. In doing prior research, I learned of the all to common ammeter problems. Now I know that it can easily be bypassed, but a pet peeve of mine is that cheap 3 gauge cluster with a voltmeter screwed to a perfectly original dash which IMO ruins the looks of the dash. So my thought was, why not put a voltmeter in the cluster while I have it apart? So thats what I'm doing. Being an engineering student, I was up to the challenge of replacing the ammeter with a voltmeter and making it look original. And I mean legitimately original look. I want non-mopar enthusiasts to be able to look at my dash and not know that it should be an ammeter.

To start, I completely tore apart an old parts cluster and removed the ammeter. After sifting through voltmeters, I found the Sunpro style-line voltmeter is so close to the ammeter its scary. Like it almost fit perfect without mods. Anyways, it was pretty simple to modify the face from the ammeter to fit the voltmeter. Now I have a dash with a voltmeter that has an ammeter face, but works perfectly!!!

Now where the help comes in. I am interested in have a custom face decal made to transform the ammeter markings to voltmeter markings. I am currently working with a graphics company to have faces made. The problem: its a $100 setup fee for me to have the custom face made. Now I am going to pay it anyways to have my gauges the way I want, but is there anyone else interested in this mod?

I am willing to put together either do-it-yourself kits with everything needed to transform your cluster, or I would be willing to transform your cluster for you. Either option would make me feel like my setup money was much better spent, and you could have a very nice, original looking voltmeter to protect your car from the ammeter woes.

PLEASE! comment and let me know what you think. If you would be interested in this mod, am I wasting my time, want it for a different dash? This is for the 71-76 dart swinger and valiant dashes, but I would be willing to setup this mod for other cars/dashes. Just let me know!!! Thanks for taking the time to read this too! :cheers:
 
speedog24 said:
Alright, It's been a little while since I have been on here, but now I need some help. Or hopefully some of you do. I am currently working on restoring the Instrument Cluster for my 74 Dart I'm restoring. In doing prior research, I learned of the all to common ammeter problems. Now I know that it can easily be bypassed, but a pet peeve of mine is that cheap 3 gauge cluster with a voltmeter screwed to a perfectly original dash which IMO ruins the looks of the dash. So my thought was, why not put a voltmeter in the cluster while I have it apart? So thats what I'm doing. Being an engineering student, I was up to the challenge of replacing the ammeter with a voltmeter and making it look original. And I mean legitimately original look. I want non-mopar enthusiasts to be able to look at my dash and not know that it should be an ammeter.

To start, I completely tore apart an old parts cluster and removed the ammeter. After sifting through voltmeters, I found the Sunpro style-line voltmeter is so close to the ammeter its scary. Like it almost fit perfect without mods. Anyways, it was pretty simple to modify the face from the ammeter to fit the voltmeter. Now I have a dash with a voltmeter that has an ammeter face, but works perfectly!!!

Now where the help comes in. I am interested in have a custom face decal made to transform the ammeter markings to voltmeter markings. I am currently working with a graphics company to have faces made. The problem: its a $100 setup fee for me to have the custom face made. Now I am going to pay it anyways to have my gauges the way I want, but is there anyone else interested in this mod?

I am willing to put together either do-it-yourself kits with everything needed to transform your cluster, or I would be willing to transform your cluster for you. Either option would make me feel like my setup money was much better spent, and you could have a very nice, original looking voltmeter to protect your car from the ammeter woes.

PLEASE! comment and let me know what you think. If you would be interested in this mod, am I wasting my time, want it for a different dash? This is for the 71-76 dart swinger and valiant dashes, but I would be willing to setup this mod for other cars/dashes. Just let me know!!! Thanks for taking the time to read this too! :cheers:
Click to expand...

I concur on the aftermarket gauge cluster although I do have one sitting here I was possibly going to add. My problem is I just got this 65 Cuda and with other car priorities I have not yet got into the oem gauge cluster. I know that nothing is currently hooked up other then the gas gauge and it pegs to the right when I turn on the headlights so there is obviously a problem there (incorrect voltage match possibly) I would like to use the oem cluster but I am also sure that the refacing you are doing won't match what I have. I will follow the thread though as I can hopefully garner some info from it.
 
That's exactly what I did...except I put an oil pressure gauge there in place of the AMP gauge. The Whitegauges.net kit came with a new overlay so you don't even have to use the Sun Pro face...just the guts.
 
That's the same link that was posted above. That's what gave me the idea for the oil pressure gauge in that location.

Yes, it has been done. That's why I was telling him another company already offers a custom decal...or will do it for much less than $100.
 
On one of my cars, I disconnected the ammeter and left it in place, then installed a small digital voltmeter in the ash tray. when people were looking at the car, I just closed the ash tray and no one ever knew.
 
Something like this ?...
Tiny plastic provisions for 2 screws support the SunPro screen. Size doesn't matter in their application. I don't expect those to support a floating screen long term.
 

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Ok guys, I do realize that this has been done. What I am attempting is to make one that looks 100% original to the car. If mopar rolled it off the floor with a voltmeter, this is what it would've looked like. I'm replacing the word ALTERNATOR with BATTERY and changing the numbers on the scale to the respective voltages. I don't see a point in having a voltmeter with a different face than my other gauges, or try to guess where the voltages are on the ammeter face. I am also planning a writeup of this for anyone to be able to do this on their own. I am also planning to expand my line to include as many different mopars as possible and offering as a service to people so that people uncomfortable with removing the plastic lens and metal surrounds from their clusters can still have this mod. As soon as I can get the decals done up I will have pictures to help prove my point. Basically, the cluster will be restored completely original, with the voltmeter instead. all of the faces and needles will look original and new, the lens will be polished, and I will also restore the bezel.
 
Also, I have no problem developing faces for other clusters, but I will need access to them. Since I have three 74 Dart clusters, it wasn't a problem to mod one. But I currently don't have any others. If anyone has a "parts cluster" I can easily get all of the measurements for the mod. Just let me know.
 
Look at the link I posted. Whitegauges.net already offers gauge faces. They offer them in original black too...not just white. They will do custom wording. It only cost me an extra $10 for the custom wording.

Here's what they did for me. Other then the faces being white, you wouldn't know that an oil gauge was never available from the factory.
DSCN2264_zps82ab7280.jpg
 
@brudar , those look nice. How is the quality and accuracy of them? Has anyone seen the factory black? I've heard the whitegauges factory black doesn't look very good. I'll give them a call though because $10 is a lot cheaper than $100. Do they have the odometer labels too??
 
The printed letters/numbers/lines exc... aren't perfect but they look decent from a foot away. If you look close you can see the printing marks. A decal will never look exactly like a "painted" surface like factory.

They offer a gloss or a matte white vinyl. The matte material looks a lot nicer IMO. I'd ask them if they have a matte black material. Maybe it won't look the way you want it to...but at least it's an option to look into before spending a lot of money.

Yes, they offer odometer labels. I'm not sure if they offer one for a 74 or not. They didn't list one for my 68. They sent me the labels for an E-body Rallye dash and they worked great.
 
I highly recommend checking out this site and contacting Benny via email. I just had him convert mine. He's a great guy and really knowledgeable especially with the ammeter to Volt conversion and gauge faces. And he does great work if you decide to have him do it.
http://www.demonivr.com/index.html
 
Alright guys, I seemed to confuse people about what I wanted when I said that I wanted a factory style Volt Gauge in my car. Well, now that my faces have come in I can (hopefully) better explain myself. People keep saying, "my volt gauge runs about the center of my ammeter scale so I know its about 14 volts." Well, I do understand that, but I want a "VOLT GAUGE", not an "Ammeter" that reads voltage. Therefore, I had my gauge face designed with the proper scale for my volt gauge, as well as proper markings (8-18 volts, not +-40 amps) and had a new label made that says BATTERY instead of ALTERNATOR. This way, it looks as if Mopar really did have a volt gauge from the factory, not an ammeter converted to read voltage. I hope this makes sense to everyone, but let me know if its still not clear. Anyways, here are the pictures of my custom face. I will upload more pictures after I have the time to get it installed in my dash.

 
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