Van

I did a little explanation on interpreting wiring diagrams - hopefully it will be useful to somebody:

vt951

Great video, Van. Sent to my wiring buddy who is just getting his feet wet with v8 swap wiring, so that part at the end where you talk about the DME relay is cool. Now I just have to find my notes on how to switch the power and ground signal wires since the GM PCM sends a pos. signal rather than ground like the DME.

Van

Maybe just put an aftermarket relay in to switch that ground trigger?

Chris White

If John Dunkel were still around I would have him change your screen name to 'Professor Van'!
Nice work, I am sure this will help many.
One tip (you may have mentioned this somewhere) some time around 87 or 88 the wire color codes in the wiring diagrams switched from German to English. Schwarz (SW) became Black (BK).
Previous to that the colors are in German and the only key is shown only on the 85/2 pdf!
SW= Black
WS = White
RT = Red
GN = Green
GY = Yellow
GR = Grey
BR = Brown
BL = Blue
LI = Violet

Chris White

Reminds me of a quick fix I did at the track on race day - cooling fan relay died so I jumpered the fog light output to the cooling fans and the driver could turn on the cooling fans with the fog light switch for cool down laps and waiting in the hot pits. it took one wire about 6" long to do that job!

gregeast

Great stuff Van, well done!

Thanks for the wire key as well Chris. Between three old BMWs and and old Porsche I have plenty of chances to read German wiring diagrams. Early on I was very confused by the wire color codes, I kept trying to get Black out of BL but it just never corresponded to the actual wire color. Then one day it dawned on me that the codes were German, which was fairly embarrassing since I speak a fair amount of German.

Much easier after that, lol.

blown 944

Thanks Van, I only wish the newer systems were as simple. There are control units for every option on the cars anymore.

Had a littel fun with wiring yesterday. Newer audi was killing the battery due to the fans staying on. Come to find out that the car wouldn't start either (would have been a nice bit of knowledge).

Turns out that the ECU fuse was blown. Still not a simple fix. After disecting the wiring I found that it was a coil grounding issue. Coils were new so looked further into the wiring. Had to cut teh coil lug apart and determine which coil was grounded. Ended up being a faulty connector at the #2 coil.

Fun times.....

I'm actually going to a class in May for this very topic. It's in Florida, so at least that will be nice..
Thanks again.

gpr8er

very nice, explained some things I wondered about

67King

Where were you a couple of months ago before I had to sort out that, myself!?



On edit....by the way, these diagrams are AWFUL. The ones I have for my (1989 German!) Ford are MUCH easier to read.