1965 Sport Fury Gauge Problems

[Mudeblue]

After driving the car and the engine is warm, my heat gauge and fuel gauge peg on hot and full. They stay in this position for some length of time and then go back to correct settings and then spike again. I believe it may be my Voltage Limiter but I can not locate it in the car or in my manual. Some say it is in the fuel gauge which is not. There is a capacitor behind the fuel gauge that hooks up to the gauge via a wire but I don't believe this is the Voltage Limiter. Under the hood, beside the voltage regulator, there is a smaller one that looks like the pictures of the Voltage Limiter I found on the internet. Anyone have a similar problem or solution to my problem, i.e. where is the voltage limiter?

 

[Furyman]

The limiter is built into the guage on 65 and 66 Fury's. If you do not rebuild the fuel guage you will burn out the temp guage as well.

 

[Mudeblue]

Thanks for the info. I took the fuel gauge out but did not disassemble because it did not appear that the voltage limiter could be inside. To rebuild, how does one proceed or is it best to try and locate an NOS or used gauge. Thanks again.

 

[HWYCRZR]

@Mudeblue blue brings up a good point. As I am wandering through my wireing and gauge panel refurbishment I came across the same statement about the voltage regulator limiting the voltage on the instrument panel. There was a statement about it being tied to the fuel sending unit or gauge but was pretty vague. As I have been through my harness an schematic a number of times the regulator has to be in the gauge cluster as it is 12 volts into the panel. My thoughts are the capacitor is to settle down the fuel sender fluctuations. But I still cannot quite figure out how the fuel gage is reducing the voltage ( if that is what it is doing) and continue to feed the rest of the panel.

 

[Mudeblue]

I have accumulated several instrument panels over the years (fuel, amp and temp). I removed the fuel gauge from one and it appears there is wiring inside the "can" but there is a pressed paper panel on the back held on by what appears to be "tiny" snap rings. I am concerned about removing them without damaging the pressed paper. I am going to try and get the instrument panel out of my car and replace the fuel gauge in the cluster. Removing the cluster is difficult and I will probably have to drop the steering wheel and remove the speedometer cluster to get to the wires since the wiring to the gas gauge, etc. to short the right tools to remove the all the wiring and pull it out. Hope it works. Next problem is all my dash lights are very, very dim even after putting in a new light switch. Thanks for you comments.

 

[mcmlvii]

Mudeblue, I had the same problem on my '66 and the problem was the voltage limiter buried in the fuel gauge. I did a writeup several years ago on how I fixed it:

Voltage limiter, fuel & temp gauges, '66 Sport Fury

I'd started by making a 5v regulator from a 7805 Radio Shack chip but ultimately I made a variable regulator using an LM317 chip. It's still going strong 3 years later.

 

[Les Clark]

Whenever I have the dash out, I always do the 7805 chip upgrade on the voltage limiter. It's such a worthwhile upgrade, only needs a couple of solder connections and you can't see it anyway.