I just noticed this when I was about to re-do my gauge bezel. When the gauges turn on, the voltmeter pegs out past 18V. I pulled the gauges out, tested the circuit and there's ~12V going to it. I would assume it's a bad gauge, but I've never really heard of Autometer gauges going bad. Any thoughts? I'm about to email Autometer as well to see if they can either swap one out for me, or to see if they tell me I'm SOL. It's been about 2 years since I bought them, so I'm sure there's no warranty.

 

maybe a bad ground.

 

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spills... How do you have it hooked up? Most autometers use three wires. A ground, a 12v source, and a signal wire. Now...the voltmeter only uses two. The ground, and the signal wire. If you hook two 12 sources up to it, or if you hook the 12v source to the wrong terminal, it will cause the gauge to not work properly. Im not sure WHY the voltmeter has three terminals on the back of it since you dont use the one, and using it causes problems...they should eliminate it.

Just wanted to double check your wiring. When I installed my autometers, I built a harness. I built each gauge hook up with three wires...not thinking that the volt gauge only needed the two wires (ground and switched 12v)...and it caused problems until I eliminated the one wire.

J.

 

I'm a f*ing retard. I rewired the gauges and I didn't realize that the voltmeter only needed two wires, power and ground, NO SIGNAL!! I just got an email from Autometer telling me this, and that's when I realized I had a blonde moment I'll clip the signal wire to see if everythings hunkey-doorey, which I'm sure it will be. Tune in next week for another installment of "How the hell did you miss that??" lol

 

Called it

It'll work with just the ground and SWITCHED 12v wire. You'll be good to go. Try to use a decent gauge wire and send it out to a switched 12v source. This is sort of a pain, because the ideal places to get a voltage reading from is either the battery or back of the alt. You can get creative to make the ground switched if you want....but I just ended up running my gauge to something that was only hot when the ignition was on. Seems to work fine for me...as long as you use a good wire it'll work for you too.

J.