Hey I’ve been planning my gauge cluster for a little bit and I recently received all 8 of my gauges for my custom cluster: Oil press, Oil Temp, Water Temp, Boost, Volt, Fuel, Speed, Tach. These gauges feature high/low warnings, calibration, peak recall buttons etc… This leads to alot of wiring… So from all these gauges I have roughly 64 wires to do:
20 grounds:
6 from gauge to warning lights
7 from recall button to gauge
6 signal from sender to gauge
8 constant power
8 power after key is on
8 Dashlight/backlight
1 Green calibration wire for fuel
The 6 to warning lights, 7 to recall button and 6 to sender, 1 fuel calibration wire are all straight forward…
That leaves me with:
20 grounds ( 6 grounds for warning lights, 6 for the recall buttons and 8 regular grounds)
8 constant power
8 dashlight/backlight
8 keyed power:
Total: 44 wires
I’m curious what people have done to break down so many wires being grounded or powered? I’ve looked into Barrier strip style terminals, but am not sure if there is a cleaner, more reliable approach?
Are you on Zilvia? there are some wiring nerds there. (Broadfield, Jeff from Jordan Innovations,etc.) on SON I think username DirtyDevo was a wiring guy?
It would all depends on how many amps the gauges pull. You most likely can splice all the constants off the same source which is a barrier strip. If they are rated at different amps you can put inline fuse off the barrier strip or just start with a little fuse box.
No I’m not on zilvia because I don’t own a 240 or silvia, these gauges will be going into an AE86 that I’ll be running an SR in… So I never signed up for it maybe I will… After emailing Marshall regarding the amperage they stated
Hi:
They pull very little, <100mA per gauge, so a 1 amp fuse for all 8 should be sufficient.
Well there you go. I would personally just splice a 1amp fuse of a constant, I would use power to the audio deck. Then off the 1amp fuse just have 8 wires come out. Won’t look good but works.
Stagger them, so in the end it’ll just be one fused wire being spliced into the OE wiring. That way when something goes wrong with all of em, you have less shot to check for…
It’ll look like this
-------|splice into wire below
----------------|splice into wire below
--------------------------| splice into wire below
----------------------------------|splice into wire below
----------------------------------------------(fuse)--------- connection