Found my dads original 1971 duster!
Since
@CFD244 called me out, I'm happy to provide my 2 cents.
1. Ask your friend what he hooked the battery power to.
1 a. Post a photo of exactly where he connected
1 b. from that we can then figure what circuits got damaged.
2. IVR. I didn't see what led to the conclusion that the gauges and IVR were damaged. Might be because I read quickly. So feel free to point this out if I missed it.
I need some help. I had a friend come over to try to get car started. He had power to the firewall, but not on car. He bipassed and ran direct wire from battery into a wire under the dash and got the car running….but it immediately started smoking like crazy under the dash and coming out of the gauge cluster. I shut it off immediately. Someone said I might have fried my gauges because they are 6 volt.
See 1 & 2 above.
That said, you still may want to remove the instrument cluster and instrument harness.
Also trying to figure out how to get the dash out to see what burnt. Any tips would be helpful. My buddy is a good mechanic. He just isn’t sure about the 12 volt to 6 volt. If that’s true
It's true the gauges operated on approx. 6 volts. That is true for many makes and models.
Thanks again! How do I buy this solid state unit?
There's member search nad RTE but seems like you have this in hand based on later posts.
Resistors. There are no resistors. The gauges internally, and the sending units have resistance wire or windings.
The ammeter "alternator gage" is different and seperate. Next post we'll go over the basic layout of power supply.