Ok, my water temp gauge has a dimmer wire on it. Question 1: Does this mean if it is not hooked up, the gauge will be dim all the time? Question 2: If the answer to 1 is "yes", where do I wire the dimmer wire into? The cigarette lighter sounds like a good idea, but I don't want to have to pull my center console...Thanx.

The reason I have to ask, is the instructions are about as thorough and read as well as if a crack addicted retarded monkey with astigmatism wrote them

 

While it'll vary from make to make, most every gauge I've seen defaults to the "bright" setting.

I suppose that you could wire a high-impedence resistor inline with a relay T'd from a headlight wire or something, but the cig lighter is probably the easiest, m'man. That's what I'd use

Brandon

 

hows about the one on the radio? just a thought......

 

I would prefer it be always bright, seeing as the other gauge has no dimmer. I have nothing to do after work today, so I will dink with it and figure it out. Thanks guys!

 

well, if you want it always bright, just splice it with your power wire, i think. Im pretty sure that is what i did for my big *** gay shift light/33" tach POS *******.. that thing.. i just put the white or yellow, whatever it was, and the red one together in a boot and spilce it into a power wire.....

 

Well, these have a red wire for power, black for ground, white for signal from sensor, and one has a purple for dimmer. I plan on just hooking them directly to the battery. Is this a good idea? I assume 12v from the battery is just the same as 12v from a hot wire elsewhere...

 

well, if you hook them directly to the battery, they will be on all the time, hooke them up to something hot on start up under the hood, break out hte multimeter homie, and make sure its nothing dinky, or better yet, run it off a 30A relay and use something under the dash as a signal source for the relay switch.

 

Good call. Never thought of that. Man, I love the logic I get around here!! Thanks a million Roy!! I suck when it comes to electrics...

 

its all good homeboy. take care bro.

 

Thanks again, and take a gander over my avatar

 

word

 

Think about that for a sec. The dimmer wire would be hooked up to a wire that's hot with the lights on. So when it sees 12V (i.e. lights on), it will dim the display. So if you wire the power and dimmer wires together, the gauge will be dim all the time! And yes, 12V is 12V, no matter where you get it from. The should be plenty of wires around where you gauge will be that will be hot with the ignition switched on.

It's a digital gauge that probably draws only a few milliamps. Why the hell would you need a 30A relay! It doesn't matter what power source you use, big or small. The gauge will simply take what it requires, no more or less.