Votage Stabalizer/regulator
Turbo Mini Forums

I need to fit one in order to run my oil temperature gauge. As a cheat I was going to use the one off of the back of my single binacle clock ( the one that feeds the fuel and water temp gauge).
Just as a matter of curriosity I wired it up to see what votage it was supplying only to find that the voltage was rising and falling cyclically.
Is this supposed to happen or is the supply voltage from the regulator supposed to be a constant value?

Own the day

It is supposed to happen.....

They are very crude and don't actually regulate the voltage but the power going to the gauges. Basically a resistor and a bi-metal strip wrapped with a heating element and the contact switches on and off as the element is heated by current drawn by the gauges.
As the standard guages are just as crude (heated bi-metalic strips) it is the power (V x I) that is being regulated.

If you new guage is a modern electronic one it should have internal voltage regulation anyway (ie, you shouldn't need to do anything) and if you added an extra gauge of the crude type it would mess up anyway as more current in total would be drawn so the average voltage would go down.

Edited by Rod S on 4th Aug, 2010.

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

With the original type voltage regulator, you won't be able to measure the output voltage with a digital type multimeter, if that was what you were using.

The output voltage of the Regulator is 10 volts. I just piggy-back two LM7805's together.

I can do you a solid 10v 2A reg in the original housing

My gauge is a smiths oil temp gauge and I was useing a moving coil metre.

Own the day

I may take you up on that

Own the day

I may take you up on that

Own the day