Morris Minor Owners Club

Hi Folks,
I was going through my box of bits today and found a smiths oil gauge along with a temp gauge. After fitting a recon engine a year ago its probably a good idea to have these gauges on the van. Can anyone point me to a wiring diagram?
Both are the old smiths little round ones.

Cheers.

The water temperature gauge will need the correct sender for that gauge. The wiring will be a little different also if the gauge is an early one. Does the needle move slowly or fast when power is applied to the "B" terminal with the body of the gauge earthed?
Is the oil gauge mechanical or electric?

Thanks for the reply,
Ill have a look in a mo. and get back.

Here's a wiring diagram for a typical Smiths type temperature gauge:

https://www.morgan-spares.com/images/te ... lation.gif

Note, the voltage stabilizer is fitted to the back of the speedometer in Minors. It is necessary to give a regulated 10V output, else the gauge(s) would go haywire as the battery charges and discharges.

You can calibrate electrical temp gauges by measuring the water temp with a thermometer and adding resistors in series with the temp sender to get your gauge the same if you haven't got the right sensor for that gauge.

Thanks for the replies,
I hooked a battery to temp gauge and the needle went up very quick.
The oil gauge is a screw thread on the back which looks like its for a pipe and a socket for a bulb.

All I have on the van is a oil warning light and nothing for temp, other than when the rad boils over!

TBH - that's enough! The Minor is greatly overcooled and normally there is no danger of overheating, unless you have removed the fan.... An oil pressure gauge is MUCH more useful! You need a T piece and fitting kit (plenty on ebay ) so you can retain the warning light. When you say the Temp gauge needle went up quickly - was it instantaneous - or a few seconds?

As indicated above you need a tee piece fitting kit (Oil pressure pipe, the adaptor piece and the T-Piece) to fit the oil gauge. ebay item 110770295755 is an example of what you need.

The fitting of the tee piece is shown in photo below[frame][/frame]

It sounds like you have an early temperature gauge, if it was instantaneous. These don't use a voltage regulator and unfortunately the sender is hard to find. It will be a GTR102 or Intermotor 5270. The sender is too different in resistance to newer ones to adapt with additional resistors. It may be easier to use a new gauge + sender.
The oil gauge is the more important and useful one to have.

Hooking up a 12V battery (which are actually usually around 14V) direct to the gauge will make it go up very quick, even if it is damped, since they are designed to operate on a regulated 10V supply!

Do you have any pics of the gauges?

Hi,
Heres some pics of the gauges:[frame][/frame][frame][/frame][frame][/frame][frame][/frame]

Middle pic is the back of the oil gauge, thanks for the help.

But does it go up 'instantly' - or just 'quite quickly' ?

I would say instantly

Hmm -well that's not so easy - as mentioned earlier - could be difficult to get a suitable sensor. Concentrate on the Oil Pressure first!

Hello, will this one work with the kit mentioned earlier? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MG-MORRIS-WOL ... 3f3b16bd8a
or this one: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MOTO-METER-OI ... 462587b8e9 , but not really need the warning light for it.

Yes, both are capillary type gauges, that operate off the oil pressure in the pipe.

Thanks for the replies, Ill leave the temp gauge for now.

So the oil gauge has oil going up the pipe into gauge which reads the pressure? If it leaks it will be good for rust proofing behind the dash!
Is there a way of testing the gauge before i buy a kit from ebay? maybe a pipe and a bit of air pressure?.

Yes, some oil does indeed run up the pipe from the engine to the gauge. Leaks are fortunately quite rare as long as you use decent fittings - the pipe is usually a strong PVC type, although older ones (often OEM fitment, e.g. on MGs, etc.) used bendy copper/steel pipe.

You can test the gauge by using a car footpump or bicycle track pump to blow into it - you should be able to get the gauge to read around 20-40psi quite easily.

It does not matter what your temperature gauge reads as long as you know what is the normal reading in your car. If it always reads 105deg no problem, if it goes up to 110deg you have a poblem

Thanks for that, Ill test the gauge tomorrow.
Good point about the temp gauge, if it starts to go up a lot you overheating!