Dan Hiebert

I was taught that part of "driving" was to monitor the gauges.  Learned to drive in a '72 IH Scout II that had idiot lights, but my dad had installed the full range of gauges, including an ammeter, so gauge watching is second nature to me.  That ammeter saved us from spending a cold night in the desert at least once when we saw a charging problem as we were heading out on a hunting trip.  I have NOT bought cars in the past because they didn't have enough gauges (once the warning light comes on, its already too late in most cases).  I've heard of folks removing or otherwise disabling the ammeter when they convert from 6v to 12.  Personally, I would not recommend that, once again for the reasons noted here.  I would add, tho, that converting the volts generally means changing the polarity, so one simply needs to either reverse the leads, or with the ammeters that simply have a wire running through the gauge, reroute that wire to the other direction.  You'd also need to know what amps your 12v is working off and use Kentucky windage to adjust monitoring accordingly if you use the original ammeter (amps are amps, watts are watts, regardless of voltage).