Thanks, that is good info.
Brad
Brad
Early A-body Instrument Regulators
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G
11
yet another improvement in the pain in the butt mech regulators. written on slantsix.org
.... (form another long winded post) you might wanna check your temp and oil pressure gages, since they work with the one and only volt limiter at the back of your dash cluster, and most likely that volt limiter will be reading low on the output side. That's to say that if your tank's dent hasn't considerably moved the side wall enough to make the float read half a tank off, you might be as well reading low on temp and oil pressure...
If you have to replace the limiter you might wanna fab your own electronic regulator using a 7805 transistor (cheap, cheap, cheap and far more reliable than stock limiter wich consist on a bimetal piece with a really thin wire wrapped around... almost like crying for failure... heheh)
this is how I've deal with the limiter (using the stock casing):
where's located (on my dash unit at least... yours might be different)
![]()
the transistor I used: (chopped off the middle leg because the back is connected to it
![]()
opening the old unit for using it for casing purposes
![]()
The unit opened and all the internals gutted (leave just the contacts riveted to the phenolic board)
![]()
Drill a 1/8" hole on the steel casing
![]()
creating slots on the side for adding to the cooling effect (use a dremel cut off wheel or similar)
![]()
![]()
I use 2 soldered cables to repack the thing. The right leg is the regulated 5 v output (stearing at the transistor's front face)
![]()
repacking
![]()
![]()
installed back
![]()
for checking the float's arm geometry, pay attention to the float assy angle. When your tank's full, the arm should be at top position. If the fluid level is lower than the float when full, then you want to carefully grab the arm and bend the floating part end down. You can check your progress using a vohm multitester: when you have near zero resistence is when your gage will read FULL. You can also monitor how it will work, considering that the gage's range is 70-0 ohms... 70 empty 0 full tank
.... (form another long winded post) you might wanna check your temp and oil pressure gages, since they work with the one and only volt limiter at the back of your dash cluster, and most likely that volt limiter will be reading low on the output side. That's to say that if your tank's dent hasn't considerably moved the side wall enough to make the float read half a tank off, you might be as well reading low on temp and oil pressure...
If you have to replace the limiter you might wanna fab your own electronic regulator using a 7805 transistor (cheap, cheap, cheap and far more reliable than stock limiter wich consist on a bimetal piece with a really thin wire wrapped around... almost like crying for failure... heheh)
this is how I've deal with the limiter (using the stock casing):
where's located (on my dash unit at least... yours might be different)
the transistor I used: (chopped off the middle leg because the back is connected to it
opening the old unit for using it for casing purposes
The unit opened and all the internals gutted (leave just the contacts riveted to the phenolic board)
Drill a 1/8" hole on the steel casing
creating slots on the side for adding to the cooling effect (use a dremel cut off wheel or similar)
I use 2 soldered cables to repack the thing. The right leg is the regulated 5 v output (stearing at the transistor's front face)
repacking
installed back
for checking the float's arm geometry, pay attention to the float assy angle. When your tank's full, the arm should be at top position. If the fluid level is lower than the float when full, then you want to carefully grab the arm and bend the floating part end down. You can check your progress using a vohm multitester: when you have near zero resistence is when your gage will read FULL. You can also monitor how it will work, considering that the gage's range is 70-0 ohms... 70 empty 0 full tank
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