All these gauges are not working, and my tacho is wildly inaccurate. Should I go for my test knowing this, and just hope nobody notices and get good quality, working ones after, or get non-matching, working ones now?

Merci again, everyone. I'll be posting pics for scrutiny of everything this week.

Seems weird they're all not working.

Stupid question... are you sure the live feed to them is working ok?

Cheers,
James

don't think any of them are required for iva. you could leave them. as long as you have a speedo that works and illuminates, it should be fine.

i'd be looking at the live power (and/or earth) if nothing happens to be working

obviously a very good idea to have all these working. last thing you want is to lose oil pressure on the way to the test, or over heat and not know

[Edited on 16/11/09 by blakep82]

but you're in canada, so it depends on the rules where you are

[Edited on 16/11/09 by blakep82]

You need to have a full fuel tank (for weights and such), and a fuel gauge pointing to "full" is an easy way to convince them of this. There are other ways (i.e. looking into the tank, or a dip-stick perhaps).

I suspect that crazy gauges might not send the perfect message (regarding over all quality of build), but it will depend on the testers whether they care about such trivialities.

I'd go to the test as you are. Most people fail on something or another anyway. But it depends on you.
Matt

Thanks for your answers. It isn't a cut and dried question is it? To elaborate:

- Water temp: nothing moves
- Tacho: wildly underreading
- Oil press: pinned
- Fuel: reads in reverse: 3/4 full and it reads 1/4 full; when there was no fuel it read full
- Volts: reads 8 volts when it should be 12. This has been replaced by a perfectly working VDO, that I mounted under the dash on the tranny tunnel

They are Autoloc Aurora gauges, that are so crap that two US distributors don't distribute them anymore, due to these problems. There is nothing wrong with the connections.

Are you sure it's the gauges that are at fault?

Fuel reading in reverse should be easy enough to fix, surely just a matter of putting the arm in the other side of the sender?

Water temp, stick the sender in a pan of hot water? make sure that works be measuring the resistance (it should change as it heats)

Oil pressure, um, pass, does the sender range match the gauge?

Tach, does it have switches on the back for setting it up? wee about until it seems right?


As far as the gauges themselves go, IIRC most work on resistance to some level, shorting the sender inputs should make them max out, or go to minimum, depending on magic. (also, if you know the range for the gauge, you could test it using the right value resistors)

[Edited on 17/11/09 by Staple balls]