Hey guys,

I have an AMP Gauge and tried to hook it up.
It seems to short out straight away.

It has a - & + terminal on the back, thats it.

Can someone help me in how to hook it up in the car and to what etc.
I only managed to get the light to work correctly etc.

Regards,
Tubby.

ok amp gauges are not for everyone to fit...firstly waht's it rated to...you gotta realise our alternators are what about 60Amp alternators...if it can't handle that, don't fit it, it would want ot read to about 80 amps for me to be happy with fitting it...

amp meters must be fitted inseries, not parrelel like a volt meter...you would fit it by taking off the negative battery terminal, putting hte positive of the gauge to the now disconnected neg batt cable, then the negative of the gauge goes to the battery, amps measure current flow, therfore see it as say liquid flowing throught he gauge to work it goes in plus out neg and to the battery....

recap(jus tot save more fuses)..

neg batt cable (removed) ------plus on amp gauge---out the neg of gauge----battery negative battery post...

Dylan..hope this helps, meand you can use it, and saves some fuses.

dylan

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Is there anything better in life than boost...??

There are also amp gauges that can be wired in parallel. They typically have a range much smaller then the current thats flowing through the wire, usually in the microamp range. You need to either get a shunt with the right resistence for the gauge or you can just measure out the amount of wire that has the correct resistence and wire the guage in parallel to that amount of wire.

If it's all set up correctly, the guage will read the correct ampage but be out by a factor of 1,000,000. eg it will read 30 microamps instead of 30 amps. However it's not essential to have it perfectly calibrated as it can be used to show the current relative to normal.

Have a look on page 245 of the jaycar catalouge for lcd meters and shunts.

I wouldn't bother with an ammeter, they just short out, and make your car catch on fire....

Just get a volt guage if you want an electrical guage, but your cordia has one standard maybe.

wire it in series from the postive cable of your battery , dont listen to this parallell ammeters there is no such animal , voltmeters are only in parallell

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it fell apart in my hands boss

LOL, I guess I should explain myself a bit better then.

Technically they are a voltmeter, however, the readings are in amps so it is also an ammeter.
By using a shunt with a known resistence and Ohm's law we can find that amperage(current) = voltage/resistance. Therefore, because resistence is a constant, current is relative to the voltage drop across the shunt.

So thats how a parallel ammeter works.

Heres a refference if you still don't beleive me:
"Build your own direct charging plant" by Robert Sharman, pages 39-41. Avaliable at your nearest Jaycar.

Well I can sleep easier tonight knowing that I wasted over a 1000 hours of electrical training at tafe when I really should have been reading the JAYCAR cat instead , how could I be so stupid ? ......went back to my training manuals and NE20 - test equipment

shunting / is done from very small current sources , like micro amps , the ammeter your reffering to is called a VOM ammeter , common misconseption the shunting resistor is wired in parrellel I will tell you now you still wire that bad boy up in series . Why would you tell that guy all that crap im sure he was having a hard enough time with wiring It up as it was , infact shunting pretty much only used in the multimeters thats how sensitive they are and what happens when you use your multimeter in parrallel whilst testing amps ??????/blows all the fuses in the back of the thing. dont meant to start argument but in his case he dident have to know all that stuff , its going a bit over the top .

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it fell apart in my hands boss

Hmmm, well now you've got me confused too
I'll have to try it out when I build my battery charging plant I guess

nobody has actually answered his question.... where does the positive wire go, and where does the negative wire go? and maybe in a lauguage all can understand- its all well and good to say "wire it up in series/parralel" but can we dumb it down a little please?

question 1) where do you put the red wire and how do you wire it up?

question 2) where do you put the black wire and how do you wire it up?


im in the same boat here guys- if i cant understand the bad instuctions that come with the vaultmeter, im not gunna be able to understand the stuff said in this thread....

not takin the piss- just a little confused
Cheers
Mitch

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Created by Gutter Racing Team...

The old: VR4 Cordz
The new: EVO6 Tommi Mack

Ammeters are wired in series.



The question was answered in the first post.



Volts and amps are extremely different things, an ammeter is most definitely NOT 'technically a voltmeter'.

See this page (first one in google) for further information.

I'm still yet to figure out why someone would want to connect an ammeter, let alone in the cabin. The only reason you'd need an ammeter is if you were monitoring an EXTREMELY large stereo system or something like that... using an ammeter to monitor most everyday cars is about the equivalent of installing the entire range of autometer products on the bonnet of a stock standard pintara

Serious advice? Unless you've got a REALLY good reason for using it, don't. The more useless shit you've got hooked up to your car the more that can go wrong :/

Astaroth.

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[size=75]Ich will die Ruhe stören

Bones heal, chicks dig scars, glory lasts forever.

i agree , amp meters will be of no real advantage , voltmeters are good indicators but not rock solid battery condition indicators ,

as for the red wire , run it off your positive from the postive battery clamp

black wire to the negative battery clamp .....cant go wrong


sorry for all the confusion , but this is tech disscussion went a bit over board


deej

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it fell apart in my hands boss

Deejay no wonder he's blowing fuses, DO NOT CONNECT THE AMP GAUGE AS DEEJAY MENTIONED< THIS WILL BLOW SOMETHING>!!!!..READ THE FIRST POST CAREFULLY< IT STATS EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW!...BELEIVE IT!

Dylan

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Is there anything better in life than boost...??

sorry deejay, but dylan's right! Despite mentioning a few times that you should hook em up in series, you're describing parallel

Astaroth.

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[size=75]Ich will die Ruhe stören

Bones heal, chicks dig scars, glory lasts forever.

shit I did too my mistake , im over this subject now

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it fell apart in my hands boss