Tiger03447

Gents: After having a semi- meltdown in my headlight switch plug, I am faced with having to undo melted insulation and trying to suss out wires that are contained in the morass . I have the WSM and the 944 Haynes manual which sometimes gives some better hints than the WSM. Trying to figure out where the wire goes to after it leaves the headlight switch plug in the WSM, only requires a 4 rotor enigma machine AFAIK. Looks like I’ll have to pull the main fuse and relay panel to find out which white plastic block the wire feeds into. (Intense joy here…not) This is a ‘83 car and I have an 83 harness but some things are not exactly as they seem from one harness to the other. I need some education and intense guidance here along with a ton of patience. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. Tiger

Gasngo

Ouch! I Ill look at my stuff and what I can do. Ill say this I turn 60 the other day and getting under that dash is brutal.

T&T Racing

@Gasngo +1 getting under the dash is brutal, I am 81. Fortunately, it is a race car and the analog dash is removed and replaced with AIM digital. It is to remove the steering wheel, separate the top dash cover from the vertical dash and pull out the AIM digital dash to gain access to the wiring. I could not replace the vacuum brake booster. The clutch MC was replaced by the engine shop that changed engines

Gasngo

Ya I was looking for something and at the end of the day I really did not find any reason to be there so hopefully I never have to. I did see something in my PDF download but have 2 separate pages of that portion of the harness is difficult to interpret. Ill keep at it. What I would say is be detail oriented and take it apart a little at a time and make notes. Again in my prime I just went after it but now I review a little more.

Jaffar

i have just been through an audit and tidy up of a 82 wiring harness including installing a bunch of relays for the head lights and radiator fans.

Which switch are you talking about, the main switch or the dipper? If you can be a bit clearer about where the problem is I will tell you what plugs to look for but as a start the high beam wire goes to G8 and the low beam D17.

I cut the bottom out of the bracket that holds the fuse/relay panel so that I could examine and work on the panel with all the plugs and wires attached and not stress the harness. Found a buch of really interesting mods in there that would burn down a house.

alex1331

show some pics if you can. the wires go from the switch to the relay and to the light through a fuse somewhere in between usually

Jaffar

Caveats:
1. My car is RHD.
2. The wiring diagrams in the WSM are not totally the same as the wiring in my car (colours, number of plugs and locations).
3. There are no relays in the headlight/driving light circuit so there is bound to be a risk in meltdowns.

I assume this is the switch that has had the meltdown:

This is the fuse and relay panel when extracted from it's frame. You can see where I have cut the frame:

Here is a photo of the back of the panel. There is a letter imprinted on the panel under each of the plugs. The plugs are A to F on my car. The connection of the headlights to the panel are A18, A19, C8 and C11. The light switch to panel are D4, D3, E1, E5 and E9. The dipper switch is G8. These do not correspond on my car but I think the WSM wiring diagram is for a US car which has a G plug as well.


I would suggest you get a new switch/switches and as much harness as you can, cut the existing harness as far as possible toward the panel and splice in new connections, preferably solder and heat shrink them or use proper insulated connectors.

Finally it is very easy to instal some relays near the headlights. I understand you can get a wiring kit to do so.

Do not look to closely at the labels on the relays in the above photos. I have removed the pop up headlights and headlight washers and used the relay locations for additional relays for the cooling fans. I have done an engine swap in this car and this has necessitated a slightly different wiring strategy.

Hope this helps.

Tiger03447

Today I pulled the gauge cluster to gain access to the major harness. The red wire with a green tracer is kaput. I know that this wire comes from the headlight motor, but in the WSM schematic it goes to point “p” wherever that is. Ignition switch plug does not show this wire. I would like to bypass this wire on both ends, but it disappears into the main harness to wherever? The plugs on the back of my ‘83 are all white plastic plugs. I am currently trying to look at another 83 harness to find out where this wire gets it’s power from. Later cars have colored plugsAFAIK. Thanks for any help. 😳

Tiger03447

I am primarily working with the rocker style main headlight switch. It also powers the dipper harness as well. I have a new turn signal switch which I’ll be installing when I put the gauge cluster back in. Thanks again for any help😳

Jaffar

Red/green runs directly between the headlight switch, terminal 30b and the lift motor, terminal p. It is not the wire supplying the power to the relay on the motor, it is the switching current. The route is direct into the grommet on the drivers side firewall and forward to the headlight area where it moves across the front of the car to the headlight motor. My car is an 82 model, one of the first built and it has a red/green wire for that function. You can see the red/green wire on the photo of the switch I posted above.

Tiger03447

Thanks so much. That gives me both ends of that one.

Tiger03447

It is my intention to run a separate harness just to the headlight motor. I have all 4 wires pulled through a silicone tube that I will piggyback onto the main harness going around the front of the car. I have one more wire to figure out that became totally overheated and made a mess of the main harness. I hope to bypass that one as well.😀