GM vehicle instrumentation stepper motors

[dr pepper]

This has been an interesting project, if you want to build a meter of somekind, or ressurect an olde fashionde one.
Ebay has several suppliers of stepper motors fo vehicle speedo's, tacho's and guages, they are good for making your own instruments, they have 3 steps per degree and operate over 300 degrees, and go b fairly quick.
I had a old nimrod fuel guage lying around, I havent used it as the meter movement was awkward to drive, so I pulled out its gits drilled a couple of holes and fitted a stepper, works well and not bad for a quid at a time, I have a 1930's ammeter which might get the same treatment.
The ones I have are made by switec, they are x27.568

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Thanks for that - I've had a few speedo's in pieces over the last year or two - and wasn't sure if they were steppers or not?

 

[dr pepper]

There are various I've had apart.
A 1998 fiat had a old fashioned speedo similar to a cable driven one, but it had a dc motor at the back and an encoder and was controlld by a micro, another has air core movements, sort of like a 4 step stepper motor, pug's use a 36 step stepper motor and they microstep it.
GM, ford, some seats and a few other use a geared stepper like I mentioned, you can get all these on ebay, air cores and 36 step ones are expensive, your better buying a clock cluster, I've had a couple of ebay for a tenner as donors.

 

[dr pepper]

Finished item 1.
This is a time clock, made from a nimrod fuel guage (0-12 x 1000lb), and I think is a wessex helicopter fuel guage (0-60 x 100lb), the electronics (pic16f628a) is in the minutes guage, there is a rs232 interface to a pc, or my lab time standard which is synced to the msf time code.
Looks fairly cool, and no doubt the mentally limited here at work wont be able to read the time from them.

 

[Pommie]

Nice job.

Btw, if you got a notification that I didn't like your post, that was a mistake. Fat fingers don't work well on tablets.

Mike.

 

[dr pepper]

Nope you ticked it as like.
At the bottom of the thread there is a option for changing your mind on your rating so you can undo something.

Thanks.