One of the most frequently asked questions we get is, “How do I upgrade to 12 volts?”

The 12-volt upgrade is probably the easiest and least expensive updating project for do-it-yourselfer. Before we get into the project, we would like to share a few of the most frequently asked questions.

Q: When I go to 12 volts will I have to change my wiring or go with a larger size wire?

A: No, if your wiring is in good physical condition, there is no need to change wire sizes. Load amperage will drop by approximately 50 percent when changing from 6 to 12 volts.

Q: Will I have to change the starter to 12 volt?

A: In most cases you will not have to change the starter. If a starting solenoid is used to engage the starter, it will need to be changed. If the starter is in poor condition with worn bushings and brushes, the upgrade to 12 volt may hasten its failure. In most cases it improves starting.

Q: I have a positive ground system, what do I need to do when changing to 12 volts?

A: Because your charging system will have to be upgraded, a negative ground is required. Start by reversing the load wiring on any electrical device that is polarity conscious. Some of the items that are polarity conscious are the amp meter, starter, ignition coil, wiper motor and heater motor, etc.

Getting started. Let.s get down to it. Four basic areas are needed to complete the project. These areas are the Charging System, Instrumentation System, Starting System and Lighting System.

Charging system. Regarding the question of generator or alternator, what is best for your needs? While 12-volt generators are used less often, a 12-volt generator makes it simple swap by changing out the 6-volt generator and voltage regulator. The amp meter will work fine on 12 volts, and give accurate readings. This would complete the xharging system phase of your project with no visible changes to the engine compartment. Another advantage of a generator over an alternator is that it will charge a dead flat battery.

A one-wire alternator with built-in regulator, which eliminates a lot of hardware, is easy to install as far as engine wiring goes. The old regulator and wiring can be removed, which cleans up the engine compartment. Usually, a bracket modification is required on most engines to fit an alternator. Aftermarket alternator brackets are available for most of the older 6-cylinder and V8 engines. If you are even a little handy, you can modify the existing bracket to fit the new alternator by welding on a mounting boss.

To complete the charging system you will need a 12 volt battery. Select one that meets your engine’s needs and battery box limitations.

Instrumention. The amp meter will work just fine and read correctly on 12 volts. The fuel gauge will need to have a dropping resistor attached between the positive terminal and the positive wire supply power to the gauge. This type of dropping resistor is available from most of the classic parts suppliers. Do not use the large load dropping resistor you will need to run fan and wiper motors. As most older trucks use mechanical oil senders, there is nothing not much to do here.

Next, all the instrument light bulbs need to be changed to 12 volt. If you forget this part, you will be reminded one night in a bright flash and drive home in the dark.

Don’t forget the radio if you have one. The best way to handle to power requirements for a 6-volt radi, would be to contact your local automotive radio repair shop. Operating a 6 volt, tube-type radio off a dropping resistor is bad news. Supply wire size is also a factors to take into consideration for older radios. This is an area best left up to the experts, if you can find one. Old radio people seem to be very hard to find.

Heater and wiper motors will need a heavy-load, ceramic-dropping resistor. Mount the resistor in the engine area, as it will emit a lot of heat. Buy a good one, big, with a good ceramic heat sink. Tie your motor leads to this resistor and use the proper size wire for the loads you are running. If you can handle the expense, you may want to replace the old heater and wiper motors with new 12-volt models. Replacement of these motors will save you time and the need to rewire.

Starting system. This part is probably the easiest. If you have a starting solenoid for your starter, change it to 12 volts. The 6-volt starter will work fine on 12 volts, in most cases better. It is hard sometimes to find 12-volt starters for older some older vehicles, so if you have to replace a worn starter, there is no problem replacing it with using an original 6 volt starter.

Positive ground starters present problems in some cases. If you cannot find a negative ground starter that will fit your application, you may need to seek out a good auto electrical repair shop to have the motor leads reversed. You can do this yourself, but if you are not confident in your work, seek professional help.

You will need to add a ceramic ballast resister to your 6-volt ignition coil. A firewall mounted resistor, such as thoughts use on early 12-volt GM products, are the easiest. The resistor is installed inline on the 12 volts supply to the distributor dropping the ignition voltage to 6 volts.

Lighting system. This area, too, is pretty straightforward and is really here just as a reminder. Remember to change your headlamps, map, courtesy, brake, turning and parking lamps. When going 12 volts, is to use halogen headlights and put bright bulbs in the brake and turning lamps. Original brake and turning lamps are usually pretty small as far as today’s standards are concerned and bright bulbs really help you be seen at night. Halogen headlights will also greatly improve your night vision and get rid of that old yellow look associated with older vehicles.

What everyone seemed to be talking about during Arizona Auction Week was the sale on the opening day of the Gooding & Company event of a garage-found 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL “gullwing” coupe for just shy of $1.9 million. We’ll also be discussing that sale, and with Gooding car specialist Garth Hammers providing his perspective, though not right now, not in this article, but in another we’re working on for later in the week.

Here, with Hammers’ help, we want to put the overall Gooding sale in perspective, and thus must point out that Gooding & Company was the only one among the six auctions in Arizona to take in less money this year than it did at its sale the previous year.

Nonetheless, Hammers said, “We were very satisfied, very happy, and we see all sorts of strength in the market. We just saw a slightly smaller number, (although) not a negligible amount.”

In Arizona in 2013, Gooding sold 101 classic and collector cars for $52.6 million. In 2014, those figures were 110 vehicles for $49.5 million. Gooding’s 6-percent drop is all the more noticeable when you consider that the other five auctions enjoyed a 16-percent increase in sales at their 2014 Arizona sales.

But things are far from bleak at Gooding. For one thing, its Scottsdale catalog in 2013 included a 1958 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder that sold for more than $8 million (making it the eighth-most expensive car sold at any auction anywhere on the planet in 2013).

For another, one of the high-dollar cars that did not sell during Gooding’s 2014 Scottsdale auction, a 1966 Ferrari 275 GTB, already has sold during the 30-day post-auction sales period, which probably boosts Gooding’s Scottsdale total by another $2 million.  There is at least one other similarly valued car from the auction for which Gooding specialists are working to close a deal.

“We’ve had a good number of 100-percent sold sessions at Scottsdale,” Hammers said. “It needs to be expected that something won’t sell. It always comes down to the bidders in the room, not the day.”

Though a Cal Spyder at RM led all sales in Arizona this year, Gooding did post the Nos. 2 and 3 cars, getting $6.16 million for a 1958 Ferrari 250 GT cabriolet and $5.28 million for a 1997 McLaren F1 GTR racer. The $3.3 million paid for a 1956 Ferrari 410 Superamerica gave Gooding three of the top-5 sales at Arizona, a very strong showing indeed.

Gooding’s Scottsdale sale has become so consistently strong that this year it moved to a larger piece of ground on the other side of Scottsdale’s Fashion Square mall so it could set up its new and enlarged set of auction tents — four of them arrayed around an open, courtyard-style display area.

That same setup will be used later this year at Gooding’s big Pebble Beach auction, but they also were needed at Scottsdale where the big auction-block tent was packed to overflowing both days of the sale.

“A couple of times I had to race to the back of the auction room to affirm bids back there and it was tough to get back there (through the crowd),” Hammers said.

Not only the size of the crowd but its composition brought a smile to Hammers and the other Gooding’s staffers. That’s because many of the faces Hammers saw in the room were unfamiliar, and that’s a good thing.

New bidders, he said, are “a great indicator of strength in the market. The cars are not just trading among people we’ve known for a number of years. There are new bidders with new enthusiasm. Some are younger, but they’re not always younger. But we’re seeing bidders in their 30s and 40s, coming into their own.”

Hammers said some of those new bidders have grown up in car-collecting families, but many others have not. Many, he said, have friends with classic cars who have talked about how much fun they have on vintage vehicle tours and rallies being staged all around the country and even overseas.

“They’ve heard about this rally or that one and they say, ‘I want to go next year,’ and now they’re turning into real enthusiasts,” Hammers said. “The events, and the popularity of events, that have taken place over the last five or six years has driven this.”

Do more modern racing heroes lend the same provenance to cars as did the sport’s pioneer drivers? We may get an indication in late February when a 1992 Honda NSX formerly owned by three-time World Driving Champion Ayrton Senna goes to auction in England.

The car was purchased new for Senna by his manager Antonio Carlos de Almeida Braga for the Brazilian racer to drive while staying at his home in Portugal. After Senna’s death in 1994, the car was parked in Braga’s garage and remained untouched until it was sold two years later to the current owner.

“Very rarely does a car with such pedigree and provenance come to market, especially with such a powerful and personal link to arguably the greatest F1 driver of all time,” said Nick Whale, managing director of Silverstone Auctions, “and as such, we’re incredibly excited to offer it for auction.”

The car, in Senna’s original choice of black with black leather interior and manual transmission, has 31,800 miles on its odometer. It will cross the block at Silverstone Auction’s Race Retro & Classic Car Sale to be held Feb. 22-23 at the historic British race track. The auction house’s pre-sale estimate for the car is around $135,000.

This year marks the 20^th anniversary of Senna’s death and the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the NSX, sold in most countries as a Honda but in the United States as an Acura, Honda’s upscale division. Senna was involved in the development of the car as part of Honda’s partnership with the McLaren F1 team for which Senna drove.

The NSX is among this blog’s choices for “Future classics.” The Hagerty Price Guide lists the 1992 NSX in world-best condition as being worth some $42,300.

Auctions America’s first online memorabilia sale did $276,300 in business with bidders from 45 states and 10 countries. Not only was the sales total pleasing to the auction house, but so was the fact that nearly 80 percent of the bidders were new customers.

The sale included more than 800 lots, around half of them from the Wally Arnold Collection.

The high-dollar sales of the event were $6,785 for a United Motors double-sided porcelain outdoor sign with its original neon lighting and $6,325 for a 15-inch Mohawk Gasoline metal-body globe complete with both lenses.

The sale included a variety of collectibles. A Rexall Drug Store double-sided outdoor sign with new neon sold for $4,887.50, a 1940’s Fosters Old Fashioned Freeze porcelain California drive-inn menu sign went for $4,715.

“The variety of collectibles available at our debut memorabilia-only sale clearly appealed to a wide and international audience,” Auctions America president Donnie Gould said in a news release. “The format of the auction proved very successful and was a great jump start to the expansion of Auctions America’s memorabilia division.”

Auctions America returns to its more familiar in-person auction of classic cars March 14-16 at Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where more than 450 vehicles are expected to cross the block at the Broward County Convention Center.

No doubt, you’ve heard about how “less is more.” Well, Bonhams’ third annual Arizona classic car auction provides evidence of the truth in that statement.

Bonhams may be the world’s oldest auction house (it was established in England 1793), but it is the youngest in terms of its participation in Arizona Auction Week, which is didn’t join until 2012, and when it sold 40 cars for $5.7 million. It did much better in 2013, when it sold 91 classic cars for $13.4 million, but that still left it deep in the shadows when compared with the results posted by rival high-end classic car auction houses — RM, Gooding & Company and Barrett-Jackson’s Salon Collection.

Such results didn’t sit well with a company known for the quality of its catalogs, whether they showcase fine art or fine automobiles. Note that the all-time at-auction record for a classic car occurred last July at Bonhams’ Goodwood auction where an ex-Fangio 1954 Mercedes-Benz W19R sold for $29.6 million.

But Bonhams’ classic car auctions in the United States hadn’t been nearly as successful, so the team regrouped and replenished its roster and decided to try the less is more format, but with less applied only to the number of cars in the catalog. The quality of those cars, however, would be significantly improved.

The first effort for the new plan was the company’s annual sale at The Quail (lodge and golf course) on the Monterey Peninsula. The result? Instead of $12 million in sales in 2012, the 2013 auction did more than $30 million, and with fewer cars.

Fast forward to Scottsdale in January, 2014, where 101 cars were offered and where 86 sold — for $23.3 million! Not only did overall sales nearly double when compared with 2013, but the average price per car went from $147,000 to nearly $273,000.

“The prices car by car probably were more important than the overall sales,” said Jackob Griesen, who was hired last year not only as a car specialist but as head of business development for Bonhams’ American motor car department. “The prices car by car were some very outstanding numbers. We set a lot of world records. Cars brought as much or more as they would anywhere else, I think.

“We all worked really hard,” he added. “We had a clear focus and mission. We’ve built a lot of momentum globally. We handled some important cars in 2013 that put us in the headlines. That means more great cars for us and more success. To some extent it feeds on itself.”A 1951 Ferrari 212 Export coupe known as “the Tailor’s car” sold at Bonhams’ Scottsdale event for $3.19 million and a 1931 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 Gran Sport Spider brought $3.08 million, significantly more than its pre-auction estimate of $2.4-$2.7 million.

Not only did the Alfa bring double what another one sold for a year ago, but, Griese noted, a 1968 Ferrari 300 GTC went for more than $800,000, “a very strong number.”

He also saw strong, even “huge” numbers being bid on 1970s and ‘80s European sports cars, whether a Ferrari 308 or Testarossa or a Porsche 911S.

Such cars, he said, have strong appeal to younger buyers, people in their mid-30s to mid-40s who may be new to classic car auctions and who bring fond memories of cars they saw when they were kids. Now they are able to buy them, provided, Griesen said, those cars have relatively low mileage and have been properly cared for. Both the cars and the money, he said, are “young tigers.”

“I would say there is a new generation coming in, and you also can see it in the (prices on) 1930s cars being a little soft unless it’s something truly spectacular that has stood the test of time, like the Alfa or a good Duesenberg or a Marmon 16.

“We saw a lot of new buyers, a lot of new clients, and they were buying cars at several different levels.”