Thinking of building a voltage limiter

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NukeBass

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My 73 duster is being restored and, I think, it is getting fairly close to completion. The shop is getting all of the pieces together and, after some research (mostly on this board), I'm thinking of building the instrument cluster voltage limiter instead of buying one. The one at classic industries (http://www.classicindustries.com/mopar/parts/mb2000.html) doesn't list the 73 so I went to the internet and found a link to this website from an older post http://www.allpar.com/history/mopar/electrical2.html

This looks pretty straight forward and I have rewired a couple of guitars in the last month and am getting a little bit better with the soldering iron (I haven't significantly burned myself lately :D ). Is there anything else I should be aware of for a 73 cluster? I have a 20W/40W iron and have really only soldered guitar connections, so I don't know how much different this would be.
 
If you are good at soldering, go to it

Make sure the iron is hot, cleaned and tinned, etc and you are using proper solder. This means something designed for electronics, NOT acid core and NOT lead free

If you are not so good at soldering, get a hemostat (Rad Shack should have) or a fine pair of needle nose with a rubber band around the handles, so you can clip it on the regulator leads and "heat sink" soldering heat away. Don't spend anymore time than you have to making connections.
 
I have some of those heat sinks. That's a good idea. I was hoping to go to Radio Shack and buy parts, but the only part they list is a 1A and not 1.5A as recommended on the webpage. I may have to order parts first.
 
Just reading that for the first time and I'll be making one now too lol I'm going to use my old one and make a plug and go.i don't want to take out my dash lol
 
mwls73duster360 said:
Just reading that for the first time and I'll be making one now too lol I'm going to use my old one and make a plug and go.i don't want to take out my dash lol
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Mine's apart right now, but I don't think I could reach my limiter with it installed. Maybe I'm just too fat to get up there :)
 
I'm kinda small 5 10" 180lb its a tight reach but i pulled mine out ok and put it back in but no way I'll pay 60 for that tiny thing lol
 
I built one. It was cheap, easy, and fixed my gauge problem (even the old one checked out) Do it!
 
I built one years ago and stuffed it in the original case with a couple vent holes added. Under a buck at the time, and works like a champ!
 
Heres an idea... buy nine feet of wire so you can mount it near the fuse box or behind the kick panel. This way , if/when it fails it can be serviced without removing the inst' panel.
 
RedFish said:
Heres an idea... buy nine feet of wire so you can mount it near the fuse box or behind the kick panel. This way , if/when it fails it can be serviced without removing the inst' panel.
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That's a good idea. With enough wire I could feed it around all of the other wires and it shouldn't get in the way.

I finally red the chalkboard in your avatar. It made me laugh a little.
 
Kind of hard to beat the $30 w/ shipping ones on ebay. Just search "voltage limiter" + Dodge or Plymouth. They are well-made with a circuit board.
 
Robj said:
I'be built two of them, one for my son's B-body and one for my Dart. Parts are less than $5 at Radio Shack. They work great.
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My radio shack didn't have any heat sinks. I'll just have to order parts from mouser.
 
Robj said:
I'be built two of them, one for my son's B-body and one for my Dart. Parts are less than $5 at Radio Shack. They work great.
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Nice job, but your photo points up a trouble spot on some boards. Those brass finger contacts are a poor design. On my 67, at least two of the brass contacts were NOT making contact with the board. You can either solder jumpers across from the contact fingers to the board, or in the case of a home grown VR, just scrape the board as you did with the cap, and solder the leads right to the board
 

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67Dart273 said:
Nice job, but your photo points up a trouble spot on some boards. Those brass finger contacts are a poor design. On my 67, at least two of the brass contacts were NOT making contact with the board. You can either solder jumpers across from the contact fingers to the board, or in the case of a home grown VR, just scrape the board as you did with the cap, and solder the leads right to the board
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Excellent idea!
 
NukeBass said:
My radio shack didn't have any heat sinks. I'll just have to order parts from mouser.
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You really don't need a heat sink, you can just mount the regulator to the cluster 'pan' itself. Sand it clean in the area, use thermal grease. The mounting tab is ground, so you don't need insulating hardware.
 
I assumed the heat sink was there for any heat above the 1 or 1.5A rating of the regulator.
 
Well what I meant was you don't need a "special" heat sink. Mounting it on the metal pan of the cluster will provide plenty of sink.
 
NukeBass said:
I have some of those heat sinks. That's a good idea. I was hoping to go to Radio Shack and buy parts, but the only part they list is a 1A and not 1.5A as recommended on the webpage. I may have to order parts first.
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Don't use the 1 amp part, it'll overheat and stop working (I've gone that route). Also be sure to use a heat sink on the 7805 regulator to dissipate the heat it does generate.
 
67Dart273 said:
Well what I meant was you don't need a "special" heat sink. Mounting it on the metal pan of the cluster will provide plenty of sink.
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I did mine recently and this is what I did. I used an existing threaded hole and screw to attach it to the back of the cluster. The mounting tab is connected to ground too, so you probably don't even have to run the ground wire but I did anyway.
 
mplex2000 said:
I did mine recently and this is what I did. I used an existing threaded hole and screw to attach it to the back of the cluster. The mounting tab is connected to ground too, so you probably don't even have to run the ground wire but I did anyway.
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Clusters are historically badly grounded, so you really should add a wire from the cluster pan (common PC board ground screw) with a pigtail to , say an nut/ bolt/ star washer to a hole in the column support, etc.
 
I'm lazy and haven't ordered parts yet, but I will this weekend. I was thinking, and I saw this somewhere else too, that if these are 6V systems, why not use a 6V regulator instead of a 5V?
 
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