Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Aesthetics Indiglo guages..

I wish I had the technical data to put forth here, and I hope that Chris Hightower can at least back up one side or the other to give solid proof, but what people are saying makes about as much sense as a person not wanting to use their brakes to stop the car when they park, so they roll into the curbs. Yeah, you can do it and sure the wheels haven't fallen off yet, but you are abusing a system which was never designed to handle the load or the impact of the alternate stopping method, especially in light of the fact that there is a device handily provided specifically for that one task. When these gauges were made for the Contour, I do not believe for one second that the designers included the extra dimmer pot for fun or for those of us who owned Contours and had no dimmer switch for the dash lights. It would have been cheaper for Dom to produce and sell, and would have been a lot less hassle to install. However, the electrical engineer who designed this system saw fit to include the extra dimmer pot for a reason.... I do not see why it is so hard and painful to use this new dimmer switch. Also ask yourself why the new dimmer pot is on the output side of the transformer and does not trim the signal from the input power wire to begin with. Transformers to my knowledge (as well as some other electrical equipment) are designed to run off of a certain voltage- period.... and not just any voltage that the user decides to input. I hate to say this as I consider all of you to be like family, but I hope someone who has done this has their transformer fry so that these topics will come to a halt. A person has these made, tells you what not to do to guarantee maximum life and to help out those with a little less knowledge, and then someone comes along with no other proof than to say "it's worked for x amount of months and no failure yet." Totally makes that person's efforts look like squat, and IMHO is an insult to the person who was only trying to help by sharing his knowledge. I do not know it all, nor am I claiming to, but when the person who originated the whole deal throws up a red flag, I am going to listen to it until I have solid proof otherwise. Going any other way would be stupid and ignorant of me, especially when I knew better in the first place.

-Jeremy