hello, i have an 02 f-350 diesel and i want to hook up a volt guage since my truck doesnt have one, they put a tranny temp guage in place of it in the instrument cluster. how do i wire this up, i have no idea.

one more thing, is it a volt guage or an ammeter gauge that i need. see if you had the same truck as me but only manual trans then you wouldnt have the tranny temp guage. so i dont know i am just assuming that it would be a volt guage, but maybe a amm guage????

 

An Ammeter measures Amperes
This is the amount that can be seen fluctuating with Rpm's

A Volt Meter measures Voltage
This keeps a constant measurement of the battery/Power system.

The voltmeter can be wired right to the battery or power grid.

6 of 1/2 dozen of the other.

Some people are changing from ammeters to Volt meters.

 

I would use a voltmeter. They are a little more expensive, but way easier to hook up. Just follow the instructions, and hook one side to ground, and the other side to a spot in the fuse box that has voltage only when the key is on. The actual spot doesn't matter, and the wire size going to the voltmeter is not critical.

You may have another wire that is hooked to your instrument lighting, for illumination at nighttime. You may have to dig around under the dash to find a wire to tap into for this. In the old trucks, the wire was blue/red for the lighting.

 

Be sure to have a fuse located somewhere in the positive wire to the gauge. Preferably near the point of attatchment. You can usually find a "hot" wire in dash, but closer to the battery will give you a more accurate reading. Problem with running to battery, is its always on and in theroy could drain battery over a long period of time. You can tap into it in the power distrubiton box and elimate this,

 

thanks for the help guys, what kind of guage would be from the factory if my truck would have hadone anyways, the volt or amm. thanks again for the help much apprieciatd.

EDIT By FTE:

prcrboy, what size fuse would you reccomend on the pos wire???

 

All User's have 60 Minutes to EDit their own post.

Please use then EDIT button directly above the Post Reply button.

 

Generally speaking if the truck originally had a generator instead of an alternator it may have had an ammeter. If it originally had an alternator it probably had a volt gauge. If it currently has an alternator the usual gauge to use is a volt meter as it's more indicative of alt health than an ammeter would be.

Wouldn't need much of a fuse if all you're running is the volt gauge, maybe 1A-2A. That's why I like the volt gauge, you're not running a lot of power through it unlike an ammeter.

 

By all means, 65CJ5 is right. You won't need much of a fuse. The fuse is to protect the wiring and not the guage. I would put a 2 or 3 amp fuse. Generators haven't been used in trucks for quite sometime. The truck would have originally had a volt guage and again 65CJ5 is right. It is an indication of the health of the charging system.