Fitting a Digital Battery Voltage Meter

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BIG F@ TW@
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Joined: Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:59 pm
Passat model: B5.5 Highline
Location: Harrogate

Fitting a Digital Battery Voltage Meter

Post by BIG F@ TW@ »

I finally got around to fitting a digital battery voltage meter today in my centre tunnel (in place of the cigar lighter). I only use the car at weekends, and over winter I had a few issues with low battery etc, so just want to keep an eye on things.

I had initially started with the intention of utilising the unused switch blank below the heated seat switch on the drivers side of the panel.

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However I changed my mind at the last minute and fitted it in place of the cigar lighter instead. You will need to remove the lighter from the ashtray, it's a bit of a faff.

So the first lot of pictures show me feeding the wire through to the switch blank, but I end up using the lighter. Obviously you will need to remove the centre tunnel to get to the ashtray and lighter.

I fed the meter direct from the battery, but I used an old 368 relay so the power is switched off when ignition is off, but I think any 4 pin relay is usable.

Hopefully the pictures make sense, whilst I had the centre tunnel out I also wired a set of usb chargers from the rear passenger cigar lighter so I still have a place to charge phones etc, these now come out into the storage bin under the arm rest.

So onto the pics, I fed the live from the battery down through the ECU box (whilst there I fed a large gauge amp power lead through for future job). I filed a small natch into the side of the ECU box so the lid would fit flush when the wires were fed through.

Next was to drop the panel under the steering wheel to feed wires through to the meter and attach the relay and earth etc. I used a bolt under the fuse box at end of the dash for the earth.

Next was relay, I found the info I needed online but it's:

Battery feed 30 (from + on battery)
Voltmeter input 87 (to + on voltmeter)
Earth 85 (fuse box bolt)
Switch live 86 (I used feed that goes to the stereo)

I earthed the voltmeter to the bolt on the gear selector cover.

There's other different switched feeds/earth points that can be used, but these are what I used.

I used a cable hook to pull the wire through from back of the dash, but if you don't want to mount in the switch blank, just feed through to the tunnel console instead for cigar lighter.

The rest is securing the relay and tidying the cables etc.


The final pic shows the lit meter, I chose red to match the interior instruments, the camera has bled the display, but in reality it's perfect and shows a steady 14v when engine running, this changes when heater/lights are on etc. All in all I'm very happy and glad I used the cigar lighter placement instead.

Obviously don't do any of this with a live system, disconnect battery first before testing etc.


Link to voltage gauge: https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre ... 189399.jpg[/IMG]ImageImageImageImageImageImageImageImageImageImageImageImageImageImage

Sent from my Shamsung using Tapatalcum powder



Last edited by BIG F@ TW@ on Tue Apr 16, 2019 12:34 am, edited 3 times in total.

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