Outer Limits 4x4 Board

My Daihatsu F-300 did not come with the clock/inclometer/voltometer unit, so I bought one from a wrecker.

The clock and inclineometer are working fine, but the voltmeter refuses to work (although the light does come on)

Looking through the forums, I see someone else had the same problem last year but unfortunately there was no follow up on whether they found out what needed to be done to make the voltometer live.

Anyone got any ideas?
There was mention of having to 'connect a wire' somewhere.

Interestingly, I used my multimeter to check the current flow and the socket and measured 12v when the car power was off, but droped to nothing when the car was started. I did wonder if I had the clock and voltometer socket around the wrong way but no change when I swapped them over.

I reversed the polarity on the the voltometer just to see what would happen, and to my surprise it jumped to 12volts when the car was off, but would drop back to zero after the car was started. I assume it should have been the other way around with no reading when the car was off, but a reading when the car was on.

Cheers for any help anyone can offer.

check your grounding on the volt meter, sounds like you have 2 +ve's 1 constant power and 1 switched. also some volt meters have a trigger wire so it is off when the car is off and the trigger wite turns it on when the car is on if your does and you want it on all the time just connect constant power to both of these wirs.
CHECK if 1 side of the volt meter is going to ground and the other should come from your battery if you run it from a supply inside the cabin it will be reading the voltage there and if there is any voltage drop in the vehicles system it will show that reading which is the incorrect reading for what you normally use the volt meter for. so straight from the battery will give you battery voltage and charging voltage when the vehicle is running.


Cheers
Simon...

Thanks for that. I regrounded one of the contacts (it was conected to a black and white cable) and now the voltmeter is working perfectly.

Cheers for the advice.