Bypassing the Amp Gauge

[Dodgerdallas]

Went on Mad Enterprises website for my 66 to try to solve some of the low performance of my charging system and found this info and diagram,the site is great but I guess their up and coming or what cause you cant get em on the phone or email but my question is the red wire going to the amp gauge shows to be bypassing it and crimped into the black feeder wire for lights,fusebox,etc and then looped right back around and crimped into the red wire again and  into the starter relay (power).Why cant you just use the black accessory wire and do away w the red? Is the red helping w a better overall power supply?

[myk]

Mad Electrical's been around for a while, but I'm pretty sure they're a garage type of business, which is why they don't exactly have a call center.

As for the 'amp bypass, you need the red wire to complete the circuit, unless I'm not understanding your question.  In any case, good call in eliminating the 'amp gauge...

[Dodgerdallas]

Thanks for the reply,I was wondering why it made a complete loop and ended up back in the same place-into a fusible link and then to the relay

[Dino]

I think the idea of keeping the red wire is to complete the circuit for the black.

The dark blue wire goes from the starter relay to the bulkhead connector.  On the other side it becomes the red wire that goes to the ammeter and to my knowledge nowhere else.  The black wire goes from ballast resistor (blue in engine bay) to the ammeter but is spliced to feed other circuits.

If you remove the entire red and dark blue wire then that means there is an open end on the black wire in the dash.  You 'could' leave it on the ammeter but that's a bit weird.  The cleanest option would be to cut the wiring loom tape, find the splice, and remove the black wire leading from splice to ammeter.  Now you can remove the entire red and dark blue leading to the starter relay.

People who actually know what they're talking about may chime in and shoot down my theory so I'm gonna keep my eyes on this because I'd like to be sure about this myself.

[Dodgerdallas]

This is going to be a good system,it gets rid of the weak link in the bulkhead connector that allways burns,you put s #10 wire straight thru the firewall and it takes the full power strain off the amp gauge-only problem is you have no amp gauge now-says get a volt gauge

[Dino]

This is going to be a good system,it gets rid of the weak link in the bulkhead connector that allways burns,you put s #10 wire straight thru the firewall and it takes the full power strain off the amp gauge-only problem is you have no amp gauge now-says get a volt gauge

Nacho swears by keeping the ammeter and he makes a good point.  It can be made safe(r).  I will be doing the bypass myself and will likely make my own decal to stick on the ammeter so it becomes a volt meter that belongs there.  You could just leave the ammeter as is, the needle is always in the middle so it looks like it's actually working.  For added security you can install a hidden volt meter but honestly I wouldn't miss it if it wasn't there.  If the car has voltage issues I'll find out soon enough!   

[Dodgerdallas]

Yeah I'd like to keep the 66 as original as possible but at this point I'm mostly concerned w reliability and performance-I've upgraded the brakes and about to drop a 440 4sp into it and really needed to do something about the charging system...

[Dino]

Don't forget to upgrade the alternator as well.

[Dodgerdallas]

As in what? Stronger?

[Dino]

Yes, stronger alternator with a direct link to battery or battery relay.  That will stop the low voltage at idle issues.

[Dodgerdallas]

This system goes straight from the alt to the starter relay,I've got the 60? 65? Amp alternator,you saying stronger?

[Dino]

This system goes straight from the alt to the starter relay,I've got the 60? 65? Amp alternator,you saying stronger?

I guess you already have the upgrade then!  Stock is more like 35 amps.  60-65 should be fine unless you plan on turning the car in a rolling sound system.

[Dodgerdallas]

No those were my younger days-100 watts is about all my tinnitus can handle and that's gotta wait! Lol

[Dino]

No those were my younger days-100 watts is about all my tinnitus can handle and that's gotta wait! Lol

With that alt and the ammeter bypass you will be a lot closer to having a safe and reliable car.  If you have not done so, be sure to check all the wiring and double check the bulkhead connectors.  Load those with dielectric grease. 

[Dodgerdallas]

Already done-I allways replace any wires that I come across because there basically falling apart and Painless is out of reach $$.i cleaned the bulkhead connector w a soft wire brush,WD40,blew it out w air and applied grease...

[Dino]

Already done-I allways replace any wires that I come across because there basically falling apart and Painless is out of reach $$.i cleaned the bulkhead connector w a soft wire brush,WD40,blew it out w air and applied grease...

In that case let me just say one more thing:  You're doing good, carry on.      

[Dodgerdallas]

10-4

[Canadian1968]

Thanks for the reply,I was wondering why it made a complete loop and ended up back in the same place-into a fusible link and then to the relay

You have to keep those wires powers everything in the car run off it. There are two major splices in the factory system one is in the black wire that comes from the bulkhead the other is in line with black wire that comes off your ignition switch. Which basically part of your red wire one way or another .

I just got finished pulling out my entire dash harness(es) and made new wires for everything coming off the ignition switch. Which as I explained will one way or another power, everything in the car/ engine compartment.

I still run the ammeter currently with a piggy back system as outline in another thread on this board. For right now I am happy with it. Mind you every singles connection is brand new in the circuit now! If some of it was 40 years old I may have some second thoughts

[Dodgerdallas]

Your plugs in the lights and ignition,are they new? If do where did u pick em up?

[70redbee]

Went on Mad Enterprises website for my 66 to try to solve some of the low performance of my charging system and found this info and diagram,the site is great but I guess their up and coming or what cause you cant get em on the phone or email but my question is the red wire going to the amp gauge shows to be bypassing it and crimped into the black feeder wire for lights,fusebox,etc and then looped right back around and crimped into the red wire again and  into the starter relay (power).Why cant you just use the black accessory wire and do away w the red? Is the red helping w a better overall power supply?

How do you guys handle the connection with the red, black and the fusible link coming together. That's 3 wires coming together with 1 out in a splice. When I did this a few days ago, I put a fusible link on each wire before bolting to the starter relay, one on red and one on black. I thought about putting round connectors on each wire and connecting them with a bolt, but decided on the extra fusible link. Will this work out ok or am I totally off base here.

[Dodgerdallas]

The guy on Mad Electric days the best way to connect any wires is crimp (w copper tinned butt connectors) solder then shrink wrap-he shys away from any bolt together wires-as for all those going into one as u ask,I was wondering that myself...

[MaximRecoil]

How do you guys handle the connection with the red, black and the fusible link coming together. That's 3 wires coming together with 1 out in a splice. When I did this a few days ago, I put a fusible link on each wire before bolting to the starter relay, one on red and one on black. I thought about putting round connectors on each wire and connecting them with a bolt, but decided on the extra fusible link. Will this work out ok or am I totally off base here.

To splice two 12 gauge and one 16 gauge wire together use a parallel connector or a splice cap. Use an indent crimp for either one, using a crimping tool such as the Thomas & Betts/Sta-Kon WT111M or the Channellock 909.

The guy on Mad Electric days the best way to connect any wires is crimp (w copper tinned butt connectors) solder then shrink wrap-he shys away from any bolt together wires-as for all those going into one as u ask,I was wondering that myself...

The best way to splice or terminate wires is with a crimp connector and a proper crimp, period. Adding solder to a proper crimp is pointless, and in fact, negates the advantages that crimps have over solder. Electrical solder, which is 60/40 or 63/37 lead/tin has higher electrical resistance than copper, and it is not flexible in the way that stranded copper wires are, and given enough vibration and/or temperature fluctuations, it can crack. So by adding solder you increase resistance and decrease durability.

Note that all of the original factory splices and terminals in your car's original wiring harness are crimped; not soldered; not crimped and soldered; just crimped. Not a single factory crimp in my 44-year-old car has failed. In fact, I've never seen a proper crimp fail. I've seen wires break away from the crimp, but that isn't a case of the crimp failing, it is a case of the wire failing, and had it been soldered in that area, it would have failed a lot sooner, because solder is relatively brittle, and when you solder copper wires it forms an alloy with the copper, making that section of wire just about as brittle as pure solder is. It is easy to demonstrate this to yourself by tinning the end of a stranded copper wire and then bending it back and forth several times. It will crack/break.

I've seen hundreds of failed solder joints on the printed circuit boards of old arcade monitors; the temperature fluctuations (expansion and contraction) over a long period of time causes it, and a car environment has plenty of temperature fluctuations, especially in the engine compartment. It also has vibration, which TVs/monitors don't generally have.

Tightly bolting ring terminals together is the same principle as crimping, and is no different than the various factory grounds in your car which consist of a ring terminal crimped to a wire and then bolted or screwed to the chassis or engine block. Just make sure the joint is insulated properly when using a free-hanging bolt/nut to clamp two hot wires together.

[70redbee]

How do you guys handle the connection with the red, black and the fusible link coming together. That's 3 wires coming together with 1 out in a splice. When I did this a few days ago, I put a fusible link on each wire before bolting to the starter relay, one on red and one on black. I thought about putting round connectors on each wire and connecting them with a bolt, but decided on the extra fusible link. Will this work out ok or am I totally off base here.

To splice two 12 gauge and one 16 gauge wire together use a parallel connector or a splice cap. Use an indent crimp for either one, using a crimping tool such as the Thomas & Betts/Sta-Kon WT111M or the Channellock 909.

The guy on Mad Electric days the best way to connect any wires is crimp (w copper tinned butt connectors) solder then shrink wrap-he shys away from any bolt together wires-as for all those going into one as u ask,I was wondering that myself...

The best way to splice or terminate wires is with a crimp connector and a proper crimp, period. Adding solder to a proper crimp is pointless, and in fact, negates the advantages that crimps have over solder. Electrical solder, which is 60/40 or 63/37 lead/tin has higher electrical resistance than copper, and it is not flexible in the way that stranded copper wires are, and given enough vibration and/or temperature fluctuations, it can crack. So by adding solder you increase resistance and decrease durability.

Note that all of the original factory splices and terminals in your car's original wiring harness are crimped; not soldered; not crimped and soldered; just crimped. Not a single factory crimp in my 44-year-old car has failed. In fact, I've never seen a proper crimp fail. I've seen wires break away from the crimp, but that isn't a case of the crimp failing, it is a case of the wire failing, and had it been soldered in that area, it would have failed a lot sooner, because solder is relatively brittle, and when you solder copper wires it forms an alloy with the copper, making that section of wire just about as brittle as pure solder is. It is easy to demonstrate this to yourself by tinning the end of a stranded copper wire and then bending it back and forth several times. It will crack/break.

I've seen hundreds of failed solder joints on the printed circuit boards of old arcade monitors; the temperature fluctuations (expansion and contraction) over a long period of time causes it, and a car environment has plenty of temperature fluctuations, especially in the engine compartment. It also has vibration, which TVs/monitors don't generally have.

Tightly bolting ring terminals together is the same principle as crimping, and is no different than the various factory grounds in your car which consist of a ring terminal crimped to a wire and then bolted or screwed to the chassis or engine block. Just make sure the joint is insulated properly when using a free-hanging bolt/nut to clamp two hot wires together.


So how do you feel about the way I have it now? Each wire, the red and the black each have their own  fusible link connected to the starter relay? So basicly I have a fusible link at each end. Am I totally wacked out here or will this be ok?

[MaximRecoil]

So how do you feel about the way I have it now? Each wire, the red and the black each have their own  fusible link connected to the starter relay? So basicly I have a fusible link at each end. Am I totally wacked out here or will this be ok?

You shouldn't have two fusible links in parallel, unless you specifically selected the right gauge for each one to make them equal the required gauge of a single fusible link. The circuit calls for a 16 gauge fusible link, and I assume you now have two 16 gauge fusible links in parallel, which is electrically the same as having a single 13 gauge fusible link in that circuit, which is almost the same as having no fusible link at all (because that almost equals the 12 gauge size of the wire your fusible link is supposed to be protecting).

A fusible link should be 4 American Wire Gauge sizes smaller than the wire it is protecting, so to protect your factory 12 gauge charging circuit wires, you want a single 16 gauge fusible link, about 3" long.

[70redbee]

Thank You Maxim, I will change it to 1 fusible link with the wires bolted together and shrink tubed and taped. This should work and not be a lot of work.
Thanks again

By the way, my wires are 10 gauge not 12 if that makes a difference.
I am still going to change it to 1 fusible link.

[MaximRecoil]

Thank You Maxim, I will change it to 1 fusible link with the wires bolted together and shrink tubed and taped. This should work and not be a lot of work.
Thanks again

Another thing you can do is leave the factory wiring (including the factory fusible link and bulkhead connections) as-is with the exception of two things:

1. Bypass the ammeter by placing both wires on one of the ammeter studs. This just makes for a convenient way of splicing them together; there are other acceptable ways of splicing them together if you prefer. Bypassing the ammeter isn't even important after doing the #2 step below, but you might as well, because the #2 step makes it so the ammeter needle will barely move / be inaccurate anyway.

2. Run a heavy wire from your alternator output stud to your starter relay stud. The size of the wire will depend on the size of your alternator, but for e.g. a 60 amp alternator, 8 gauge will be fine (and use a 3" long 12 gauge fusible link at the starter relay stud).

When you run the heavy wire from your alternator output stud to your starter relay stud, it makes bypassing the bulkhead connector unimportant, because no heavy current will be passing through there anymore due to the new 8 gauge wire acting as a shunt; i.e., electricity takes the path of least resistance, and the new 8 gauge wire will have much less resistance than the factory 12 gauge wires that go through the bulkhead connector twice. The only real heavy current through those factory 12 gauge wires is when the alternator is charging the battery, and that will now have a new path to take.

This is a lot less hassle than following the Mad Enterprises diagram, and it is more effective as well, considering his diagram shows the factory wire from the alternator being cut and rerouted to the starter relay stud (his diagram assumes a 10 gauge factory wire because it was drawn with '70s Dodge pickups in mind; your car probably has a 12 gauge wire instead, which is even worse).

In short, if the only thing you did was run an 8 gauge wire from your alternator stud to the starter relay stud, you would already have a better charging circuit than what is shown in that diagram, and at the same time you will have eliminated the heavy load from the factory wiring, thus eliminating the need to alter it.

[Canadian1968]

Your plugs in the lights and ignition,are they new? If do where did u pick em up?

Do you just mean the female terminal ends???  I picked up a case of 50 for $6 my local napa store !

[TexasGeneral]

1. Bypass the ammeter by placing both wires on one of the ammeter studs.

Have to disagree with this one... these studs can sometimes be shorted out internally to the gauge housing (creating another problem).. buy something or at least bolt the connections together and insulate..

[MaximRecoil]

1. Bypass the ammeter by placing both wires on one of the ammeter studs.

Have to disagree with this one... these studs can sometimes be shorted out internally to the gauge housing (creating another problem).. buy something or at least bolt the connections together and insulate..

There is no additional risk from placing both wires on one stud compared to leaving one wire on each stud as it came from the factory.

In my car I have them bolted together with a short machine screw, nut, and lock washer, and wrapped with self-amalgamating tape; but I only did it that way so that I'd have one less hassle when removing and reinstalling the instrument cluster.

[Pete in NH]

I agree with Nacho on keeping the ammeter if possible. As Nacho has pointed out the ammeter is really a battery current meter and tells you whether current is flowing into or out off the battery. I understand that with bigger high current alternators on newer cars, which were needed to keep up with increased electrical demands, ammeters became impractical and voltmeters were substituted. But, what  a voltmeter tells you is very different from an ammeter.

To use the old water/plumbing analogy- voltage is electrical force or pressure as pressure is to water. Current or amperes is the electrical equivanent of water flow or volume. You can have water pressure (electrical voltage) but no water flow (electrical current) in a pipe or (wire). Voltmeters make the assumption that if you have electrical pressure you will also have current flow which is not always true. If a battery has gone bad in a way to have a high internal resistance you can have very little current flow though it. A voltmeter would report everything is fine but, an ammeter would show no or little current flow.

I think with stock current range alternators and some wiring upgrades to get around the bulkhead connectors issues ammeters are just fine and I'll be keeping mine. Super big alternators are a whole other story though.


I agree with Maximum, that MAD Electric mod. is kind of technically correct electrically but the implementation is messy. I too would prefer to run new wiring of a heavier gauge and use only one wire rather that doubling up the existing wiring. The MAD Electric wiring as shown introduces extra connections which potentally reduce the reliability.

[Big Sugar]

Well if your gonna continue to run that old archaic Mopar alternator id bypass the ammeter completely but if you opt for a newer denso 60 amp or even better. Nippondenso current sensing alt then it may be ok to just leave it hooked up.  If you plan on upgrading your stereo or adding better lighting and installing that fancy chrome 100 amp alt. id suggest you ditch that amp meter and sort your wiring out before hand, you don't need ALL your current flowing thru the bulkhead connector and under your dash.
But if you feel attached to that old AMMETER. at least take it apart and make sure its in good shape.
Personally id do the Mad conversion and as for the Amp. Gauge convert it to a volt meter.  Redline gauge works does it


Ron

[Brass]

1. Bypass the ammeter by placing both wires on one of the ammeter studs.

Have to disagree with this one... these studs can sometimes be shorted out internally to the gauge housing (creating another problem).. buy something or at least bolt the connections together and insulate..

This is how I have mine.  Easy, and it seems to have worked really well.  The wires are meant to be connected to the gauge studs – just attach both to the same one.  That completes the circuit without current passing through the gauge.  Also, since the gauge is fixed and stable, I think it is safer than bolting them together.