Hey everyone! I just got done swaping dashboard and gauges from my parts car to my 85 Brat. Everything seems to work okay, except that the fuel guage doesnt work, and the voltage gauge seems to be reading a little low. Everything worked okay before in both cars. Any help or advice is apreciated! Kurt

By the way, the gauges are analoge, not digital!

Okay, I just went and filled up on gas (how embarassing would that be to just be out of gas the whole time?!), and took the brat for a long drive. After 10 minutes of driving 30 mph, the gauge slowly rose to almost half a tank. The volt gauge also went up from 10 volts to about 13. This lasted for a few minutes, then back to no gas and 10 volts. So I am thinking it is a bad ground someware. I replaced the negative battery cable, with no luck. Does anyone have any suggestions on specific places I should check for bad grounds? Thanks again, Kurt

Okay, I just went and filled up on gas (how embarassing would that be to just be out of gas the whole time?!), and took the brat for a long drive. After 10 minutes of driving 30 mph, the gauge slowly rose to almost half a tank. The volt gauge also went up from 10 volts to about 13. This lasted for a few minutes, then back to no gas and 10 volts. So I am thinking it is a bad ground someware. I replaced the negative battery cable, with no luck. Does anyone have any suggestions on specific places I should check for bad grounds? Thanks again, Kurt

 

I'm not sure about your car, but on mine when we first put in the different motor, we forgot to hook up the guage plug that is on the drivers side under the hood and the guages didn't work (easy fix, LOL). Maybe your plug has a bad ground or a wire about to come out of the plug? Just a guess, but worth a shot to rule that out.....

Knock Knock

 

Whos there?

Bump!

 

Anyone haven any ideas? I dont belive that the ea81 cars had a gauge plug on the firewall like Karen speaks off, plus my temp and oil pressure gauges seem to work okay. The only specific ground wire I found is a black wire with an eyelet on the end. Does anyone know where this is supposed to go? I had it mounted to my parking brake cable mount, which seemed to be a good ground according to my multimeter. Also, is it possible to switch the two round plugs that mount to the back of the dash? I was wondering if it would have been a possibility that I have them hooked up backwards! Thanks again for any help or advise! Kurt

Alright, just a little update on how I turned out incase anyone comes across this problem in the future. There were two things I found wrone, one was a inline fuse holder that the insulation was wearing away on. We checked the ohms, and they went all over the board when we wiggled the wires around! The other problem was a short on the back of the printed circut board. I dont know if I had scratched it when installing the gauges the first time, or what, but we soldered in a jumper wire, and now its as good as new! Kurt