clocks and gauges

Need some help, been having problems with my gauges just shooting to max when i power up my car and just staying there, oil pressure and oil temp, they occassionally bounce aswell, so i done some searching and people say its an earth problem, had into an auto electrician and he said it was the sender (someone mentioned the sender would not affect both gauges) so i took the dash to bits and the wiring is a bit chopped up and attached to other wires (from the standard gauge loom) but managed to trace the route of most of the wires, 2 red go into engine bay one to sender and one to the oil temp sensor

I removed the earthing point and gave it a direct earthing but still the same issue so i dont think its an earth issue, maybe gauges? And sender is the issue or the actual gauges?

They are prosport gauges...so now another issue with the rev counter which does now work and also bounces sometimes and also my headlights keep blowing fuses located beside the battery.

I have a multimeter but dont have a clue what to do with it or where to start looking for the issue, electrics are scary but new problems keep popping up in regards to electricals.

Anyone have any advice on where to put this multimeter thingy and what to look for.

Thanks in advance

ooooh that's a hard one to advise on tbh

sounds as though you have a whole heap of wiring probs and tbh these cars aren't easy to try solve these problems as its a case of gradually going through checking earth points to multi plugs and on circuit board
you will also have signal wires from each relevant sensor but I doubt that its a problem with those if various gauges are all going haywire
I would initially check the earths to the main plug going in to the main clocks and the 3 centre gauges then check the earth track on the circuit board

also dodgy pin connections on the circuit board main plugs are another common problem

I can only comment on one of the problems you have listed above but i hope this will help !
Headlights blowing the fuse....
I had this a year or so ago and it drove me nuts - everytime i turned the headlights on it would pop the fuse (but from memory it was the fuse inside the car below steering wheel)
Anywho - i tried a few times to trace the issue and ended up going to a local guy who specialized in electrical issues with cars - he spend a day and found the wiring running from the fron of the car, under the carpet, to the back clusters had degraded over 20+ years and the insulation had worn away causing the bare wire to short on the metal of the body.
He replace a fair run of wire that solved the issue.
Cant comment if this will be the same for you mate but thought id share what happened to me as it sounds like you will be fault finding several issues !
Hope you get it resolved !
AL.

Yeah i cant fault the car bob still the most reliable car ive owned just these electrical issues are drivinge mad and only getting worse. Ive noticed that both my yellow head light plugs are both melted where the earth cable goes to them looks like they have been on fire, and in regards to wellings comment i found the cable which goes to my water bottle in tge boot to be majorly wrecked at tge bottle end and only 1 wire going to the 2 pin connector, if that makes sense i dunno if that could cause an issue

I had similar problems with my old centre gauges. They were electric type gauges that had been wired into the original 3 gauge harness. I tried fixing the earths which didn't worked. I ended up giving up and rewiring the whole original harness and problem fixed!

I've also had problems in the past with electrical gauges being wired in sequence. I now always wire each gauge with a separate positive and negative. Not sure if that's a common problem

gtir_woody wrote:I had similar problems with my old centre gauges. They were electric type gauges that had been wired into the original 3 gauge harness. I tried fixing the earths which didn't worked. I ended up giving up and rewiring the whole original harness and problem fixed!

I've also had problems in the past with electrical gauges being wired in sequence. I now always wire each gauge with a separate positive and negative. Not sure if that's a common problem

This is how the gauges are fitted now, all the wires connect to a connector block then feed to the old connector wires from tge standard gauges

As the others said it's really hard to say but I'd try rewiring the whole factory 3 gauge loom. But in saying that it could be a number of other issues. Anything to do with electrical sucks haha

as said it may be easier to just cut that loom back then solder another bit of loom in and re-join the wires so all the connections are good, and possibly the same with the clock loom.
for some reason these cars don't like wires chopped about and bits added with crimps and joining connecters.
im no auto electrician but I think it alters resistances in the wires and all these gauges / sensors are dependant on resistance and ohms readings same goes for ecu loom where any sensors need to transmit a reading to the ecu
so for that reason we always run a thin solder line to join them as that seems to not alter the resistances but crimps and big connecter blocks do

ok im gonna just rip all the wires out and rewire them, can i run cables straight to the battery?

no not really

don't rip anything out yet or your gonna tie yourself up in knots
within next 2 weeks il cut the sections of loom out that you will need from a car we have here that's gonna be scrapped and il send them to you then you can join it further back to a good bit of loom

Ok thanks very much bob really appreciate it

Well after more searching on prosport gauges im gonna bin them and buy some better ones, think the gauges themselves have blown or whatever, however probably linked with all other electrical problems im having just now

I utterly hate elecrical problems on cars I also had the headlight blowing the fuse inside the car and traced it to a chaffed wire further back in loom but everything on my car seems to be wired in to everything else so at some point i will sort the wiring out

A lot of things didn't work on one of my R's when I first got it. Turned out that the previous owner had managed to short a wire trying to fit the radio and it had melted the insulation right the way through the main loom back to the fuse block. Had to take out the dash, split the loom open, and repair/insulate all the melted and shorted wires. Quite a few hours of work but solved all the problems.
But I quite enjoy a bit of soldering..

Electrical problems can be so annoying to figure out. I actually love playing with wiring on my car though, you don't get dirty like working on the engine haha