And now what are you going to do with it Simon

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1970 Mini Deluxe - 1275, Weber, Clive 346 cam, MS 4-pot slotted discs, Megajolt ignition Now with new improved Mambas... almost on the road
1966 Van with Traveller rear seat conversion
2008 Prado GXL
All in various states of repair...

I'll stick it in my cooper - I'm going to do a thing like qcard's dash display, but with readouts from the megajolt, and now I can do speed & distance

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did I tell you that I won a trophy?

And now what are you going to do with it Simon

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1970 Mini Deluxe - 1275, Weber, Clive 346 cam, MS 4-pot slotted discs, Megajolt ignition Now with new improved Mambas... almost on the road
1966 Van with Traveller rear seat conversion
2008 Prado GXL
All in various states of repair...

it's installed in my gearbox now Dave, might test it tomorrow on the way to work

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did I tell you that I won a trophy?

Hey Simon, Anything you you can tell me about installing that thingy would be greatly appreciated.
I still haven't organised my speedo pick up, I've been busy with other bits.

it's as simple as it looks Aaron - grab an old one and compare it with the photo, you'll see there's nothing to it...

machine out the top part of that spacer thingy, make a ring to go around the shaft and hold a magnet, and file a bit of the boss away to mount the sensor. Then drill a hole through the boss and araldite the sensor in place

Time will tell if that particular sensor can handle the heat and oil however - I was going to finish wiring it and test it on the way to work today, but slept in!

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did I tell you that I won a trophy?

OK, that does it, I'm sick of the dodgy uncalibrated speedo and fuel gauge in my Moke. I'm going to build an electronic speedo too. That hall effect sensor has convinced me, the other pickups around are a bit too expensive.

My plan is to gut a standard speedo and mount a stepper motor to drive the needle and an LCD display to replace the odometer. There's a clever trick with vertical scrolling characters, to create an odometer effect, that I might try.



I haven't decided whether to modify the fuel gauge or not. I might just read the input from the float level in the tank and use the microcontroller to drive the existing gauge, that way I can at least calibrate it. Maybe down the track a graphical lcd would be the way to go, then I could display anything else that I wanted.

Tim

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1951 Morris Commercial J Type Van
1955 BSA C11G
1961 Morris Mini Traveller
1969 Triumph TR6R
1977 Leyland Moke Californian

How hard is it to build a computer to take input signals (for temperature and fuel level) and have adjustable calibration to make the gauges more accurate?

EG. My tank sender is 15-270 ohms non-linear and my gauge is 30-240 ohms linear.

cool - I've thought about doing that, but wonder if you can get one with enough steps per revolution to make a smooth sweep of the needle. I keep meaning to gut a speedo out of a falcon or something to see how they do it

my speedo is only ornamental

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did I tell you that I won a trophy?

Most modern car gauges are stepper motor driven. The units are tiny, about the size of a 20-50 cent coin. They have little gearboxes in them to make sure they have the strength to lift the needle and also the gear reduction smooths them out.
So instead of having one step per degree, they might have ten steps per degree.

You'll probably find they're all stepper motors these days.. back when I last played with them (early 90's ) we were using I think 256 steps/revolution, so that's a bit more than one degree per step. I'd be amazed if they're not a lot finer than this these days.

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Simon

The adventures of an owner builder in the Tallarook Ranges

that's good to know

how about a way to drive the original odometer? I want to keep the original look but have electronic internals

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did I tell you that I won a trophy?

I'd keep the mechanical odometer, just run a digital needle.

but what would you drive the odometer with? surely you'd ditch the crummy cable!

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did I tell you that I won a trophy?

I'll be running a digital odometer, but if keeping the mecanical odometer surely you'd keep the cable for simplicity, cost and reliability?

The only other way to run it would be stepper motor, how else would you be sure of it's accuracy?