Got around to wiring gauges to senders this weekend; my gauges are from early '80's econoline van (12V) and my senders are from donor '90 Crown Vic (12v).
When wiring my instrument cluster, I used 9 v battery to check to see if wiring gauges had polarity. Used common bar jumpers from original instrument panel, and fed power to that for the three gauges: fuel, temp, oil pressure. My gas gauge shows full at empty (reversing wiring at tank has no effect) coolant temp has not seen warm engine yet. Fuel sender is 27 ohms at empty (73 Mustang); temp sender(stock Crown Vic) is 347 ohms at cold. I'm not concerned with accuracy of gauge to senders at the moment; just deflection in the right direction would be good.
What am I missing here; gauges shouldn't have polarity ??

One thing I will have to change is the oil pressure gauge; donor had dummy light; instead of gauge, so sender shows full pressure; will not work until I find a sender with variable resistance.
And no; I wasn't doing 180 at the time I took the picture. LOL


Consolation in that my electric two speed wiper(s) work !

 

Got no answers for ya but I think those gauges look good in that cluster. Nice job.

 

Hey tip, the person you need to talk to is Julies Cool F1. PM her with your question and I'm sure she will be happy to answer and help you with your questions. She has wiring diagrams and knows a ton about this stuff. She helped me with the rewiring of my truck along with several others of us who needed help...

 

I wouldn't assume that Econoline gauges will work correctly with CV senders; particularly the fuel sender. The oil gauge should be the easiest to get working correctly, just get a sender for the Econo. Temp gauges on an EFI car are likely to be very different than those for a carb'd car (was the Econo carb'd?). Temp senders come in two types, that can increase or decrease resistance with increasing temps. I think you just need to get matching senders.

 

You will need to get matching senders for your gauges (gauges are from early '80's econoline van). Anything else would just be guessing.
I'm going thru this right now with my fuel gauge, I have used the 1956 sender for my truck for the last 16 years. It stopped working a few weeks ago and I can't find a good used one, so I will be changing over to the matched set (sender/gauge)from Mid-fifty.
brian...

 

I heated the temp sender I removed and replaced, with a torch it registered infininite resistance (open) when cold and zero (closed) when hot which confirms it had a threshold temperature that it closes at. I am doing research on the replacement guage; to see if I can find out its ohmic range.