Guage Too Bright

[flint54]

Need an electrical wizard's advice. My A/F meter dims with the

dash lights, but remains an order of magnitude too bright at all

settings except "off". I would like to wire in a pot, balance it, and

forget it. Can anyone enlighten me how to do this correctly? Thanks!

[HOrnbrod]

Sometimes, depending on the threshold of the illumination LEDs (if that's what it is), it won't dim enough before cutting off. In that case you have to lower the input voltage by using a ballast resistor. Tie a 0-5 ohm pot in series with the illumination input to the gauge and adjust it until the brightness is how you like it. Then take it out of the circuit, measure the resistance of the pot, then solder in (hardwire) a fixed resistor close to the same value. Should be close to a single ohm resistor or so.

[flint54]

Thanks! I think they're LED's, they look that bright. And, they dim only to

about 50% and then cutoff. That's exactly the info I was looking for.

Off to Skycraft (our local mil surplus outlet) tomorrow.