Autometer Gauge Wiring

[dustyduff]

For starters, I'm not that smart when it comes to electronics, but I'm not a complete moron. I recently picked up center gauge vent, along with three gauges (egt, voltmeter, and water temp). The guy who sold it to me, kinda did a hack job on the wiring, so I'm redoing all of it.

Question:

I beleive that they use 18 guage wiring on the LED lights, and recommend 18 for installation. The 12V and ground wires on each gauge are not long enough to tie all three together.

I wanted to use 16 (extend) and 14 (from source to where they're tied) gauge wiring to extend and solder them all together. Is this overkill, or should I be able to get away with that gauge wiring? I could only find 14 and 16 gauge wiring in the colors I needed (easier for installation). I have the instructions for wiring them together, but I'm more concerned with the size of the wiring.

 

[95blackGsTurbo]

For the LED's I just used speaker wire that's connected together so I can keep track of those two wires. For the gauge's 16 is plenty. That is all I used to wire my gauge's together. I had to do the same thing with mine when I got them new. Just make sure you either a) butt connect them together or b) solder them together.

 

[waiting2bl33d]

don't worry about the size of the wire...pick up some speaker wire at walmart its like 10 bucks for 100 feet. don't wire your EGT negative to anything else except for a ground. make sure to keep your wires seperate. post if you need some help i <3 wiring

 

[selmerguy]

ground a wire and run it to behind where your gauges are. then tap all your grounds from your gauges on that long ground wire.

 

[dustyduff]

Thanks for the reply guys. I'm not sure what they're called, but the other guy used these small plastic connectors that spliced through the insulation of the wires in order to connect one wire to the next. It worked, but looks like crap and was hard to follow from all the jumbled wires. I'm definitely gonna solder the connections and put some heat shrink wrap on them.

I was mainly worried about the 14 guage being too large. I wanted to extend the bulb wires with the 16 gauge wire to tie them together and then use the 14 to run it to the dimmer switch. Same goes for the other connections, by using 16 guage wire for all the leads from the gauges, then 1 long 14 guage wire to whatever souce.

 

[94mitsuGST]

I used 18 gauge to tie all the gauges together and 16 for the main, and thats plenty.