Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications General Mods ? For Chris and all you other electrical gurus

I just installed my Lotek gauge pod in my tour this weekend.... the wires have been run but nothing has been hooked up yet. I did notice that for 3 gauges that the pillar does not leave a lot of room for 6 light wires and 9 gauge wires, so what I ended up doing for my gauge pod is this: out of the pod there is one red wire for a 12 volt power source, a yellow for the lights, a black for ground, and green for the oil pressure sending unit. Save for the green wire, the gauges are all wired together (i.e. 12 volt from one gauge runs to the 12 volt on the gauge below and then ends up running out of the pillar on the last gauge's 12 volt terminal, and same for the light power wire, and the ground wires for the lights ran to the ground terminal on the gauge and then down to the ground terminal on the gauge below and out to a single ground wire.) Ok, so now my questions....

1. Did I do the right thing? Am I risking damaging the gauges by wiring them this way?

2. I had to take the pod down to trim the edge, and noticed that one of the wires had accidentally gotten pinched so for precaution it is taped. I do not want my 12 volt power wires grounding out and shorting out my gauges but I cannot see once it is all installed where all the wires are running. I would like to install fuses on both the 12 volt power wire and the light wire. What amperage would be recommended for this kind of a set up? I am running electric fuel pressure, oil pressure, and voltmeter.

Thanks guys... sorry that took awhile to explain but hopefully I have made it clear. I just want to make sure that I do the right thing before I go any further to prevent damage to my gauges and my car.

Theoretically there's no harm in wiring up your gauges like that. It is electrically equivalent to making separate taps for each. However, in my experience, some electronics components act strangely when you wire their grounds in unconventional ways. I guess they were just highly sensitive to extraneous signals. But if everything works fine, you should be set.

As for the fuse, my guess is 5-10 amps is more than enough. Think how much power a 60-watt light bulb outputs; that's the equivalent to 5 amps @ 12V...

FWIW, I wired my oil press. and voltmeter guges the same way. No problems.

It would only be a problem if they gauges suddenly needed to draw more current (like a car stereo amp that hits a huge bass note), which should never be the case.
Also might come into play if you battery gets to low (but by that time your car would be dead), you might notice your gauges staring to malfunction.
So really there isn't anything to worry about.
I personally don't like the grounding wires all tapped together, but again, not something to really worry about since the gauges and their lights don't draw that much current.

FWIW,

I've wired AutoMeters in my Mustang in just that manner and they work just fine. They're even all electrical, not mechanical. The only down side is that if you lose 1 hot or ground, depending on where it is, some or all could stop working until you fix the problem, rather than just having a single gauge go down.

Putting them in parallel like this is fine.

Hey guys... I had a few minutes before work so I thought I would stop in to say thanks to everyone who responded. On a side note, I think it is really a shame that these gauges (esp. fuel pressure since it cost me an arm and a leg) are not boxed with any kind of fuse. It would seem to me that ANY aftermarket electrical component should have some kind of short/overload protection to protect the product in case of a mishap. Anyways, I will stop before I write another essay Thank you all!

You're fine.

John