Auto electronics ?, 24V gauges in 12V circuit

[BBC]

I'm going to be reworking the instrument cluster in my vehicle soon and have some parts from a similar cluster that I'd like to make use of. The problem is that the other cluster is from an old 24V vehicle while mine runs on 12V.

I haven't dabbled in electronics much so I don't know if I have any options for using those parts or not. Two things occurred to me:
1. There might be some way I could simply amplify the voltage in those circuits that require 24V (I think there will be 3 of them).
2. My vehicle will be running with 2-12V batteries wired in parallel. Is it possible to run a separate circuit off the same batteries running them in series? I can't put my finger on a reason why it wouldn't work but it just seems kind of wrong.

Thanks in advance for any ideas you have.

 

[audioguru2]

Hi BBC,
Welcome to our forum.
It might be very difficult or impossible to use a 24V instrument cluster in a car that is designed for 12V.
The speedometer will work if it is the old mechanical kind and the cable fits. It will be wrong if the wheels are a different size. If it is electric or electronic then who knows if it will work?
What about all the guages? If they were driven by a computer then they probably will work. If they were driven directly by 24V sensors then the sensors in the 12V car are probably different and the voltage is wrong.
Instead of changing all the lightbulbs to 12V, you could make a 12V to 24V converter, but the cluster's dimmer will probably burn out even if you did change all the bulbs.
The converter could possibly power the sensors, if you spend much time tracing the wiring for each one and the sensors are not different.
It aint as easy as it looks!

 

[ante1]

Hi BBC,

Can you supply more info on what kind of instruments it is you want to use? Is it oil pressure or petrol gauges and do you also have the transmitters for them?

 

[BBC]

Ok, let's go with two gauges: one oil pressure and one fuel level. I do not have the sending units from either. I'm fairly certain that the oil pressure one is an electronic signal sent from a unit under the hood. It is not inconceivable that I could get the transmitters but in the end there's only a certain amount of energy I care to expend going down this avenue and trying to find those parts might exhaust that. I can still accomplish most of what I wanted to regardless of the electronics as the 24V thing is mostly going to be disassembled and used for architectural components; it just would be pretty handy to use these two gauges from the unit.

 

[ante1]

There are many things that can go wrong here but sometimes the gauge is the same for 12 and 24 Volts (except the bulb) it