Voltage monitor

[Bradford]

A buddy of mine lost his stater last year which is never convenient. This got me thinking: If my stater failed and I knew about it as soon as it happened, I would have a much better chance of making it out of the woods before the sled died!
My first thought was to build something that would indicate when the system voltage was near the stand-by voltage of the battery instead of the charging voltage of the stater. What I ended up going with is a voltage gauge that I found on Amazon with an integrated LED bar graph with different colors to indicate different voltage ranges. Green = "good to go" / Orange = "unplug your headlights (if daytime!) and head for home" / Red = "plan on walking soon!"

I found the wire that is hot with the key in the first position which happens to be the wire that goes to the kill switch and used it to power the gauge. This way, I can turn the key on before starting the sled to measure the battery stand-by voltage which should be around 12.6V. Once started, I can see the charging voltage which is between 13.2 and 13.8V depending on the load on the system. Another bonus is, if the starter relay sticks or the
key stays in the start position, the system voltage gets pulled down to about 11V which you can see in an instant.

IZTOSS DC 12V meter

Cheers
Brad

 

[GR8BBQ]

Sounds like you wanted the Starter Saver from RoczToys....