Recomended battery gauge?

[Kamatari+]

Hello Cb7tuner!
I want to add a gauge that monitors the battery voltage. I've never done this before. Are they any particular recommended gauge or location to place it?

[93twodoorLX]

i have an autometer volt gauge. work great reads accurately, at least according to my multimeter. and i dont think they are all that expensive.

-sean

[cloudasc]

Hello Cb7tuner!
I want to add a gauge that monitors the battery voltage. I've never done this before. Are they any particular recommended gauge or location to place it?

I have some autometer gauges myself. The one I got was oil pressure, battery voltage, and coolant temp as one gauge. I then mounted an Oil Temp guage to my A pillar.

Mechanical gauges are better for under the hood applications. Otherwise your bring potentially hot and dangerous liquids into the cabin of the car.

In regards to hooking up electronic gauges, I have an aftermarket oil temp, oil pressure, coolant temp, and volt gauge in my cb7.

On the back of the block under the intake manifold there are drain plugs, both for oil and coolant. I had them tapped for 1/8" NPT. The coolant & oil temperature sensors was inserted directly into one of the drain plugs. For oil the oil pressure sender I had a 2ft hydrolic hose made with 1/8" NPT fittings on each end, one end screws into the factory pressure sender location with a 1/8"NPT t-fitting (bought from home-depot), with the factory and aftermarket senders connected to the t-fitting.

Here are some pictures of the drain plugs I am referring to:



After tapping for 1/8" NPT:



Here are the locations of the plugs (oil is below the filter, coolent is to the right of the filter: (The oil pan gasket has been replaced since these photos)




Here is a picture of the hydrolic hose, t-fitting, oem & aftermarket oil pressure senders:


Here are pictures of where the senders are mounted to the engine:



Here are where I mounted the gauges:


As for the wiring its really simple, one wire is ground, one is power, and one is signal. You only need to run one wire from each sender to the gauge, then you tap into existing power and grounds at the driverside fusebox, for the lighting just tie it into a circuit that activates when you turn on your running/parking lights (but don't connect it to the dimmer knob/circuit as the load from the extra lights could cause the knob/switch/relay to burn out.)

I hope this helps!

This should open your eyes to the potential installation of other gauges. A battery gauge is super simple, with only two wires (three if its backlit).

[sonikaccord]

You can get the cigarette lighter kind...