Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

I put the new voltage regulator in and no change! However I did notice that the wire that connects to the gauges are fried and falling apart(bare). I'm going to make a new gauge wire that connects the fuel, oil pressure, water temp and see if that makes a difference. It may be that I expecting the water temp gauge to move sooner than the temp registers!

The gauges should start to move as soon as you turn the key on but they are the thermal type so will take a few seconds to stabilize at the correct reading. If you bought a new regulator of the original type it needs to have a good ground at the back of the cluster before it will work. A volt meter should see an average of 5v at the gauge terminals but since the regulator action is on/off with 12v pulses an ordinary home type meter may not be fast enough or capable of giving an averaged volt reading.

Here is what the original type regulator looks like inside and what the output to the gauges would be as viewed on an oscilloscope. Ground is the heavy line in the middle, the 12v pulses are at the top of the screen and the lines below the screen are common when regular contacts open and close. That is what is typically called noise. It does not affect components of that era but unless the output has some extra work done to it would raise all kinds of problems if a modern solid state component or device tried to use the output of the regulator for anything.