I have a 1966 coupe w/ a 289.

I've been having problems for months getting the car to start, turned out that the alternator was dead along with the battery cables being corroded, which i replaced with a 100amp 1wire alt from jeggs. The car starts without a problem, as well as the voltages w/ and w/o the car running which all checkout, however there are still two problems.

1. The ammeter is acting strange. It appears normal until something starts using electricity, the more power used the further to the left the ammeter shifts, regardless of whether the car is running or not. I'm pretty sure this is due to the fact that I'm now using a 1wire alternator, but I don't know how to connect the ammeter properly with the new setup.

2. The car has been running fine since I hooked everything back up, that is until I took the car out tonight. I'm not sure what caused this (it started after the gauge lights had been on for a couple minutes) but the ammeter gauge started filling up with smoke and soon spread to some of the other gauges. It reeks like burning plastic and I've since unhooked the battery to be safe until I figure out this problem.

Thanks,
Tim

 

sounds like you've hooked your amp-meter correctly and as something is pullign a _lot_ of energy the needle goes up.
You probably have a shortcut somewhere. A loose wire behinde the dash that is 12v powered and topuches chassis/ground.

please guys corretc me if i'm wrong.
An ampere meter is always hooked in line with the current flow (not parallel to it).

So this should work:
"+of battery" -> into ampmeter socket1
ampmeter socket2 -> "-of battery"
if you've swapped sockets on the ampmeter the gauge will go tye wrong way round. If it does interchange the cables on the ampmeter.

Secondly: check all your fuses. Someone might have bridged a fuse with tinfoil or something. If all fuses are in place and fine, then one of them should have burned.
If that never happened, you probably have a wire from battery or alternator going unfused. Maybe some self laid cable for an amp/cd/cdchanger if someone was mad enough.

So if the smell came from behind the cluster. take out the cluster and check for where its burned. check for loose cables. Isolate everything that's blank ....

hope it helps ...

Kalli

 

already wrong. what i said is right (goes into the current flow and not parallel). But my desciption of it with ampmeter and battery is wrong.
The way i described is parallel and this is only made for testing voltage.

the following might help to clarify where the ampmeter hooks in.

For example if you take the minuscable of the battery.
hook 1 socket of ampmeter to batteryminus
the other to the cable you just pulled. That will measure amps.
But wait for the lads to correct me on that. I still believe you've hooked it up right and check for the rest of my post above.

Kalli

 

The first tool you should ever invest in when working on old cars is a good multi-meter. First, you need to visually check the wires to see which ones are burned. There may even be several, in which case a new wiring harness may be in order. Somewhere under your dash, a short has caused the wires to burn. Get rid of the old wiring and replace with a new harness and make damn sure all wires are fused.

 

+1

The harness and proper fusing is infinitely cheaper than a carbeque. I've been there and know ; )