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Full Version: Volt Meter showing low
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I am putting all Autometer gauges in my car. All seems to be working well except for the tach. The gauges came pre-wired in a pod from JME enterprise. The volt meter will not show of 11 volts. I ran a jumper wire around from the battery to the meter and get almost 13 volts. Running I get slightly more. I connected my jumper wire to ground and 12 v switched source on solenoid and get same almost 13 volts, but when reconnect to dash wiring only 11 volts.

Anyone have any suggestion?
Sounds like the gauge is working proper. U might have a bad wire or maybe blew a fuse or fusible link while you were changing the gauge. U might have no choice but to run a new power wire. Not sure what you are working on but the system might have been wired differently for the original system. Did the original gauge work fine?
I have checked all the fuses and all are good. The original "gauge" "worked". The original gauge did not display a specific voltage, only a range, but it did do this. A couple of days ago when searching voltage regulators on NPD catalog, I came across a "voltage regulator constant" which regulated higher voltage to a lower voltage from the rest of the system to the dash. I could not find this behind my dash or on my old gauge cluster. I posted the same question on another forum and a member replied there, somewhat confirming what I discovered from the catalog. He stated that the old system has lots of connections that drain off power and suspected that this was my issue and I was going to have to run direct instead of through the system.

But, I think you may be on the right track with the bad wire, I can get continuity back to the solenoid from the dash and it always measures lower than 12 volts in my gauge and multi-meter. I am guessing its just system loss from alternator back. Short of doing a complete, updated re-wire, I really dont know what else to do but go direct from engine to gauge. I was just trying to keep wires to a minimum under the hood.