DI, I had problems with the pins in the connector on my '76. I took little wire brads and inserted them in to the pins through the backside and resoldered them. Made life a whole lot easier.

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Official Cookie and Mater Tormentor.

Little trick I figured out that made the still intact prongs practically invincible in the Dart's cluster:

Take some house electrical wiring (the large flat white bundles with three LARGE copper strands inside), pull out a section of copper strand and cut it into 1/2" long sections. Now ram those into the prongs through the back (be careful that you have the tip of the prong against your work bench surface, cause if all you're holding onto is the PCB, the force will push the prong out of the PCB's hole). Now fill it from the back with solder, and cut & grind down the little bit of copper sticking out the back so it's flush with the PCB, put a small piece of electrical tape over it, and viola; bomb proof prongs that fit TIGHTLY into the connector.

I did this with the prongs that weren't yet broken off of the Dart's cluster, and it's sturdy as I'll get out.

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'74 Duster w/ HEI ignition, beat to snot suspension, A904, 8.25" 3.55 SG rear, still being tuned up and gets 17 MPG

Know how they always build a better idiot? That's me

That shunt ammeter does not connect to the instrument voltage regulator in any way. Follow the traces or look at the wiring diagram. I have a 76 Valiant, can't get that ammeter to work even after checking with a fine-tooth comb. It works only very slightly for a few weeks after cleaning and tightening all connections. Same setup in my 87 truck and that one works great since I cleaned the connections 7 years ago and has not been a problem since. Back to the 76 Valiant..... It uses a section of the main wire between the alternator and battery for a shunt. I think it's about 6" long. I'll have to go to the junk yard and find a bad harness on a truck like mine to peel apart and see how long the shunt is on that.

Nothing about 5 volts in any of my 1970s or 1980s vintage factory service manuals. Yes, I recall seeing some manuals calling out 5 volts. Either the people writing the manual did not know better or they did not want to bother trying to explain how it really works. If you have an oscilloscope hook that up and you will see.... 12v, 0v, 12v, 0v, 12v, 0v, 12v, 0v,

I found this over at Moparts. Good reading and good up grade the the voltage limiter. http://www.moparts.com/ub/ubb/Forum36/HTML/000001.html

The "pseudo 5 volts" comes from the 12v wave that is produced. If you do put it on a scope, measure the time from the start of one 12v pulse to the start of the other 12v pulse. This is called the period. Then measure the time within this pulse that it is at 12v, the "on time". The ratio of these two numbers, multiplied by 12, will come out to be approximately 5. The basic idea is, if the device that is being powerd by this pulse will not be affected by the freqency of the 12v to 0v switch, then you vary the "on" time of the pulse within one period and this will vary the apparent voltage the device sees. Nifty principle called pulse with modulation, aka PWM.

For example, if the period was 10ms and the on time of a 12v pulse was 5ms, the apparent voltage would be 6v. You can acheive the same results by having a period of 2ms and a on time of 1ms. The idea is to switch fast enough so the device being powerd won't "flicker" and your good to go.