Gauge Questions with New Centech Harness

[DirtDonk]

Better hurry buddy! I'm catching up! LOL.

Paul

Btw, that IS an invitation to respond. Hah! May not be "special", but it works!

 

[j.r.nice]

Better hurry buddy! I'm catching up! LOL.

Paul

Btw, that IS an invitation to respond. Hah! May not be "special", but it works!

Maybe I should wait up.......
ooops to late.......guess I can hit the rack now.......
J. R.

 

[csangster]

More Centech questions

Okay,

I have a few more questions.

I'm hooking up the harness to my dash and I have a few wires that I am unsure of.

1) I don't have a 'dome' lamp but I do have a courtesy lamp on the passenger side. Which wire to do I run to this lamp? I have a dome lamp with the wiper bundle and another wire labeled 'dash lamp' which one should I use?

2) How do I hook my stock cigar lighter up to the connector they give me? Do I need to go purchase a different cigar lighter that interfaces with a blade connector?

3) I have an aftermarket radio, and the PO cut all the wires running to it for speakers, should I just take it to a Circuit City (or similar) and ask for a schematic of the radio to wire up the power and the speakers?

4) Which blade on the heater control switch is the power blade? I pulled the brown wire off and forgot which blade it came off of...

5) Back to the radio/speakers. How do I wire the stock speaker in the dash?

Non-electrician playing with wires........

thanks,
Chris

 

[csangster]

Centech Harness

I almost forgot,

For wiring the Ammeter, was I correct to assume that the battery cable needs to run through the hoop in the back of the instrument cluster? The Centech directions did not visit this issue, they just said something like, "if you ammeter has two posts, cut the wire and attach it to the posts with two heavy duty ring terminals". Well I didn't have two posts on the back of the ammeter, I just had the hoop, so I cut the wire and spliced it back together after I ran one end through the hoop.......was this the right thing to do? There was a drawing in the Centech directions that referenced a 'pass-thru type' ?? so I passed it through.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[j.r.nice]

Okay,

1) I don't have a 'dome' lamp but I do have a courtesy lamp on the passenger side. Which wire to do I run to this lamp? I have a dome lamp with the wiper bundle and another wire labeled 'dash lamp' which one should I use?

2) How do I hook my stock cigar lighter up to the connector they give me? Do I need to go purchase a different cigar lighter that interfaces with a blade connector?

3) I have an aftermarket radio, and the PO cut all the wires running to it for speakers, should I just take it to a Circuit City (or similar) and ask for a schematic of the radio to wire up the power and the speakers?

4) Which blade on the heater control switch is the power blade? I pulled the brown wire off and forgot which blade it came off of...

5) Back to the radio/speakers. How do I wire the stock speaker in the dash?

Non-electrician playing with wires........

thanks,
Chris

I'll answer as best I can, I dont have a wiring diagram of it anymore....
1) I would use the "map light" wire from the wiper bundle, that way it can be controlled from your light switch. i dont know what the "dash light" you mentioned is......possibly a Po item?

2) The Ford one was originally a round connector that slipped over a threaded "lead". If you have a molded connector on the new wiring, I would match to that. I would stay away from cutting and splicing the new harness. Cigar lighters are cheap, besides, you can get lighted ones if you want!

3) Depending on brand, you might be able to get it on-line. Radios are pretty simple.
a) there are 2 wires for power,
one is constant (to supply power to the memory to retain presets)
the other is "ignition" and supplies power when the ignition is on.
speaker wires are pretty simple too........2 wires to each speaker, usually coded grey & grey/black, green & green/blk, purple & purple/blk and white & White/blk. The colored wire with black tracer is the (-) to the speaker. You can play with the wires to see whicc is left/right - front /rear.

4) Dont know.

5) Depending on the type of radio/stereo, the black tracer goes to the neg side and the colored goes to the (+)

HTH

 

[DirtDonk]

Sounds like you did the right thing with the alternator/ammeter wire. If it's not too late I would make sure that crimp is real tight, and that you Tape-the-living-crap-out-of-it (since it is too late to shrink wrap it if you didn't) as a safety/longevity kind of thing.
It's probably fine, but I just like to make double-sure of the connection and make sure that there is nothing to abrade the wire's outer jacket that might cause a short.
I know Ford just used a push-pin type connector, and it seemed to work just fine for 30 years, but there's a lot of potential current passing through that wire, so caution is the best route to take. Of course if you used fusible links or fuses at each end of the wire, that is normally all the protection you need. And it's not always obvious that BOTH ends should have one.

2) I ended up using an O.E. type connector on the lighter wire so we could retain the stock lighter. Plenty of them in the old harness, and easy to find at your local auto parts store. Usually.
I had them already in my "kit" so it was no big deal.

1) Yes, use the "dome lamp" and ground wires from the windshield (wiper) harness for your "courtesy/map light". Since the stock courtesy lamps were attached to the steel dash, the ground is not specifically necessary, but the factory "dome" lamps were in the plastic wiper cover so it was needed. Just hook it to the dash with the light's screw, and it'll be another ground. Never a bad thing.
The dash light wire is for for the '73 and later dash knob indicator lights, so it's part of the dimmer activated instrument lighting circuit. You can use it for aftermarket gauge lighting as well, so don't cut it off. Just seal the end if you don't have a use for it right now.

4) OK, just went out (brrrrrr, he says in his best CA accent!) and got a new one out of my trunk along with a multi-meter. But it just happens to be marked. With the center terminal in the up (12 o'clock) position, it looks like the top or center one is for power. The one towards the driver's side is for LOW speed with the opposite one for HIGH speed. A quick continuity check bears this out.

5) Don't remember which color is which (assuming the stock wires are still on it), but I think the terminals are marked "+" and "-" so you can use those same wires from an aftermarket radio. You just have to either remove the speaker to look for the markings, or do your best contortionist impression to see if you can see them. They may even be different sizes, and if so, somebody who does a lot of installs may be able to help interpret that.
If a stero is used, you can actually use it as a "center" speaker by wiring it using jumpers from your regular stero speakers. Don't remember if you use both positives (think so) from the stero, or both negatives, but you hook the same polarity wires to the normally opposite polarity terminals. At least that's the way it was listed back in the '70's (if I remember correctly?). Not sure if that's still valid or not.
Really, a speaker that old will probably work no matter which way you hook it up. Just may not be as efficient if hooked up backwards. Dunno.
Or you can just use it for your CB radio's external speaker jack.

Hope you can make sense of the ramblings. Good luck.

Paul

 

[csangster]

Centech

Thank you,

HTH and Paul, you both have been a great help. I'll probably be hitting you up for more questions as I go....as a matter of fact, I have one right now.

On the ignition switch. I used the new one because my old switch was crap. Problem is, the new switch doesn't fit in the hole in the dash, the hole is too big. So what I did temporarily (until I make a nice sheet metal part with labels on it) is I grabbed a big washer that the iginition switch would fit through and I placed that on the outside of the dash so I could screw the ignition switch nut on and tighten this into place. I'm guessing that the switch is grounded through the harness, but I don't want to be making a silly assumption. Recommendations??

Thanks,
Chris

 

[csangster]

Ammeter

Sounds like you did the right thing with the alternator/ammeter wire. If it's not too late I would make sure that crimp is real tight, and that you Tape-the-living-crap-out-of-it (since it is too late to shrink wrap it if you didn't) as a safety/longevity kind of thing.
It's probably fine, but I just like to make double-sure of the connection and make sure that there is nothing to abrade the wire's outer jacket that might cause a short.
I know Ford just used a push-pin type connector, and it seemed to work just fine for 30 years, but there's a lot of potential current passing through that wire, so caution is the best route to take. Of course if you used fusible links or fuses at each end of the wire, that is normally all the protection you need. And it's not always obvious that BOTH ends should have one.

2) I ended up using an O.E. type connector on the lighter wire so we could retain the stock lighter. Plenty of them in the old harness, and easy to find at your local auto parts store. Usually.
I had them already in my "kit" so it was no big deal.

1) Yes, use the "dome lamp" and ground wires from the windshield (wiper) harness for your "courtesy/map light". Since the stock courtesy lamps were attached to the steel dash, the ground is not specifically necessary, but the factory "dome" lamps were in the plastic wiper cover so it was needed. Just hook it to the dash with the light's screw, and it'll be another ground. Never a bad thing.
The dash light wire is for for the '73 and later dash knob indicator lights, so it's part of the dimmer activated instrument lighting circuit. You can use it for aftermarket gauge lighting as well, so don't cut it off. Just seal the end if you don't have a use for it right now.

4) OK, just went out (brrrrrr, he says in his best CA accent!) and got a new one out of my trunk along with a multi-meter. But it just happens to be marked. With the center terminal in the up (12 o'clock) position, it looks like the top or center one is for power. The one towards the driver's side is for LOW speed with the opposite one for HIGH speed. A quick continuity check bears this out.

5) Don't remember which color is which (assuming the stock wires are still on it), but I think the terminals are marked "+" and "-" so you can use those same wires from an aftermarket radio. You just have to either remove the speaker to look for the markings, or do your best contortionist impression to see if you can see them. They may even be different sizes, and if so, somebody who does a lot of installs may be able to help interpret that.
If a stero is used, you can actually use it as a "center" speaker by wiring it using jumpers from your regular stero speakers. Don't remember if you use both positives (think so) from the stero, or both negatives, but you hook the same polarity wires to the normally opposite polarity terminals. At least that's the way it was listed back in the '70's (if I remember correctly?). Not sure if that's still valid or not.
Really, a speaker that old will probably work no matter which way you hook it up. Just may not be as efficient if hooked up backwards. Dunno.
Or you can just use it for your CB radio's external speaker jack.

Hope you can make sense of the ramblings. Good luck.

Paul

Paul,

It isn't too late for me to play with the ammeter, I have my dash removed so I can get to everything easily. I can cut out the splice and shrink wrap it properly. Where do I get the shrink wrap and splice so I can have a more reliable connection?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[DirtDonk]

Hell, you're just around the corner Chris! I've got some you can have. I'll be right over. No wait... There's probably some snow between you 'n me. Well, the Caddy DOES have off-road tires.... hmmm. We'll have to wait on that delivery I guess.
Actually, you can usually pick up a small package of strips of shrink-wrap at any auto parts store these days. Or you can sometimes buy one long strip at an electronic supply place.
Just pick up a size that is just larger than your crimp. That way it can still shrink down tight around the wire.
Then again, to avoid the hassle if you did a real sanitary job on the current crimp, what about tape? Do you have some high heat electrical tape? Might not be as cool as shrink-wrap, but it should work.
Any one else have an idea before he cuts his nice splice all up?
Just making sure before you go to the trouble.

Paul

 

[csangster]

Hell, you're just around the corner Chris! I've got some you can have. I'll be right over. No wait... There's probably some snow between you 'n me. Well, the Caddy DOES have off-road tires.... hmmm. We'll have to wait on that delivery I guess.
Actually, you can usually pick up a small package of strips of shrink-wrap at any auto parts store these days. Or you can sometimes buy one long strip at an electronic supply place.
Just pick up a size that is just larger than your crimp. That way it can still shrink down tight around the wire.
Then again, to avoid the hassle if you did a real sanitary job on the current crimp, what about tape? Do you have some high heat electrical tape? Might not be as cool as shrink-wrap, but it should work.
Any one else have an idea before he cuts his nice splice all up?
Just making sure before you go to the trouble.

Paul

Understood,

I'll definitely keep that in mind before I cut ANYTHING up.

Thanks for the info,
Chris