6 replies to this topic

[mike.]

City e
1986

When my car was resprayed, the guy who did the work simply took all the parts off the car, and rather than disconnecting them - Just cut the wires going to everything. This has been done for the headlights, sidelights, indicators, horn - Maybe more bits that i've not thought of yet. But at the moment i'm left with quite a lot of loose ends and I need to track it all down and get some labels on these wires so I know what to connect to them.

I've been studying the haynes wiring diagrams to try and track which colour wires go to which components, but its not been a massive help as I never know which of the diagrams applies to my car and it doesn't show very well which way round the wires connect to some of the components.

Below is what i've got from the haynes diagram, just wondering if anybody could check it or knows off the top of their head if this is right before I start wiring things wrong.

Headlights - Same wiring for RH/LH and the colours are:

Blue/White
Blue/Red
Black

I'm pretty sure i've got that right - However which wire connects to which connection on the bulb? I'm going to be wiring in these replacement H4 plugs: Link

So as if looking at the back of the bulb they have yellow coming off the top pin, blue coming off the right hand pin and pink coming off the left hand pin - So which colour wires from the cars loom connects to which of the wires on the plug?

Indicators

RH wires are one Green/White and one Black
LH wires are one Green/Red and one Black

Is that correct?

Horn

Haynes says the horn connections are one Purple and one Purple/Black - I'm not sure about this, I had a quick look at the wires hanging around the grill area and can't see these wires. I've either not looked hard enough or i've got the colours wrong from the haynes


Those are the main components I need to wire back in, however i've also got quite a few other wires coming out of the loom in the grill area which I don't know what to do with. Below are a few pics if anybody can help me identify what these wires connect to.



I know the black and white ones are coil connections - But i'm running megajolt so I just need to insulate those and leave them be - However theres 3 of them?

But then theres a White/Brown wire with a spade connection on the end - I though this connected to the oil pressure warning switch but the wire isn't long enough so can't be that?

Then theres a White/Orange and a Yellow/White which I don't know what they're for?



Then theres the third Black/White wire with a spade connection on it, this is quite a short wire?

A White/Yellow wire with a spade on the end - You can see theres an unused spade connection on the starter which it looks like it goes to but my car starts without this wire connected so what does it do?

Finally there a Green/Blue wire coiled up and taped there aswell

Can anybody name these connections?

Thanks

[Dan]

Well it can all be found in the wiring diagram with a bit of work, the year of the car isn't relevant these colour codes are a British Standard. How they actually connect won't be shown because the diagram assumes that you are using a standard wiring harness that hasn't been all butchered up like this. It's easy enough to work out though.

Where are the headlamp wires cut? The headlamps should connect to the main loom at a cluster of bullet connectors in the middle of the slam panel. From here each headlamp is wired using a small loom which is more or less a standard part for British cars and is available from many suppliers, all using the right colours and connectors. So you can just get a pair of those and connect them back into the bullet cluster if the butchery has been done closer to the lamps themselves.

The coil has 4 connections in your car, a thick pink/white and a thinner white/yellow are the coil supply. A pair of white/black are the ignition system low tension connections. Of those two white/black cables one is for the dizzy (the other end of it is the short wire you aked about that's slightly further up the loom), the other is for the tacho. Of these cables, if you are running Mega that you have installed completely independantly of the original ignition the only one you will need is the tacho connection. Continuity test the two white/black cables to find which is not connected to the short dizzy cable and keep that one. The ends of all the other coil connections should be taped up to insulate them and taped back to the loom. Same for the other end of the dizzy cable. The other end of the white/yellow is the one hanging by the solenoid, this should also be insulated and taped back. It's the cranking ballast bypass for the ignition system and no longer required.

White/brown is indeed for the oil pressure switch. It's too short I'd imagine simply because someone has been messing with the loom. Looms are taped with non-adhesive tape because it allows them to be repaired and is less messy. Looks like your loom has been retaped with conventional adhesive electrical tape, non standard and as I said messy. All the cable lengths and positions could be wrong.

The horn is purple/black. Its black ground wire may not exist as some cars are fitted with horns that earth through their bracketry from factory. If that wire does exist it generally isn't part of the loom, it's just short and connects to the body directly.

Green/blue is for the temperature sender.

[mike.]

Well it can all be found in the wiring diagram with a bit of work, the year of the car isn't relevant these colour codes are a British Standard. How they actually connect won't be shown because the diagram assumes that you are using a standard wiring harness that hasn't been all butchered up like this. It's easy enough to work out though.

Where are the headlamp wires cut? The headlamps should connect to the main loom at a cluster of bullet connectors in the middle of the slam panel. From here each headlamp is wired using a small loom which is more or less a standard part for British cars and is available from many suppliers, all using the right colours and connectors. So you can just get a pair of those and connect them back into the bullet cluster if the butchery has been done closer to the lamps themselves.

The coil has 4 connections in your car, a thick pink/white and a thinner white/yellow are the coil supply. A pair of white/black are the ignition system low tension connections. Of those two white/black cables one is for the dizzy (the other end of it is the short wire you aked about that's slightly further up the loom), the other is for the tacho. Of these cables, if you are running Mega that you have installed completely independantly of the original ignition the only one you will need is the tacho connection. Continuity test the two white/black cables to find which is not connected to the short dizzy cable and keep that one. The ends of all the other coil connections should be taped up to insulate them and taped back to the loom. Same for the other end of the dizzy cable. The other end of the white/yellow is the one hanging by the solenoid, this should also be insulated and taped back. It's the cranking ballast bypass for the ignition system and no longer required.

White/brown is indeed for the oil pressure switch. It's too short I'd imagine simply because someone has been messing with the loom. Looms are taped with non-adhesive tape because it allows them to be repaired and is less messy. Looks like your loom has been retaped with conventional adhesive electrical tape, non standard and as I said messy. All the cable lengths and positions could be wrong.

The horn is purple/black. Its black ground wire may not exist as some cars are fitted with horns that earth through their bracketry from factory. If that wire does exist it generally isn't part of the loom, it's just short and connects to the body directly.

Green/blue is for the temperature sender.

Thanks for that, cleared most things up for me

Yeah my loom has been messed around with a fair bit and yeah it is now wrapped in insulation tape and as you say its made a right mess of the wires when I removed it to trace wires! I've got a fair bit of cable conduit left over from my MJ loom, i'll probably just put the loom into that rather than re-wrap it.

So going off what you've said, the majority of those connections I can just insulate. I don't need the coil connections, the tacho wire isn't needed either as i've wired a tacho feed into my MJ loom and the temp sender won't be needed as i've got a smiths temp gauge fitted. Just need to try and reposition or extend the oil pressure warning switch wire and find the horn wire now I think - I'm pretty sure the horn I had fitted last did earth through its bracket as well.

The headlamp/indicator wires have been cut just short of the inner wing, so the majority of their wiring is still there connected with the bullet connectors. On this subject where did these wires originally pass through the inner wing? On my car they pass through a small hole in the inner wing, down by the bottom of the grill opening. I always assumed that originally I passed through the large holes at the top of the inner wing through the large grommet but minispares list that item as the wing mounted side repeated grommet. When I reroute this wiring should I get a suitable sized grommet and route it up through the large holes in the wing or drill the existing hole out larger and fit a proper grommet on that?

I've had a look on Moss for the headlamp wiring loom section and couldn't find them under mini or any other cars that supply for. Minispares sell this: Link - Which is pretty much exactly what you mention, they say its only suitable for sealed beam use although I assume it would only require some changes to be made to the sidelight connections to work on most aftermarket headlamps. However £12 each is pretty steep when i've got plenty of suitable wire and those new H4 bulb plugs already, so if I can work out which wire connects to which pin on the bulb I think i'll just extend the remaining loom and make sure I label it up properly so its easy to see which wires go where.

Thanks again

[Dan]

Ok then, blue/red is dipped, blue/white is main. Red/green is sidelights (plain red on the headlamp harnesses).

The headlamp harnesses are about £8.00 at Auto Sparks and less at other wiring or vehicle specialists. I'm pretty sure I've seen them at £3.00 in places. As I said they are a standard part.

They thread through irritatingly tiny holes in the inner wing just under the slam panel usually.

[mike.]

OK thanks. Think i'll drill out the holes in the inner wing a bit more and get a bigger grommet for them, the hole is too small really.

Also found the headlamp harness's on autosparks here: Link

£8 for the same one as minispares are selling for £12, or £4.50 for one without sidelight wiring - Which is easy enough to add in separately. Infact a lot of things on the autosparks site are much more reasonably priced than the likes of vehicle wiring products. It would be better to have the proper harness... I'll have to have a think.

Thanks anyway I should be able to sort it now

[mike.]

Need to bring this topic back up again now...

I've sorted most of the wires, unwrapped the loom and got all the wires the right length and in the right place so its all ready to be connected and re-wrapped.

However when I unwrapped the loom where the headlights connect, the cluster of bullet connectors this is where i'm struggling.

Basically i've got the 4 wires for the lights in the loom - Blue/white, Blue/red, black and red for sidelights, these 4 wires go into the bullet connectors, then the other side of the bullets is some lengths of red wire (must have been used to extend the loom by a previous owner. Then the lengths of red wire are spliced to form the 2 head light looms.

As these pictures show:



There you can see the red wire is spliced into some headlight wiring, the ends of the red wire are then connected to another headlamp loom:



So to sort this out i've bought 2 proper headlight wiring looms to go to each light. These have come with the bullet connectors on them, so should be plug and go - However i've now got 4 bullet connectors for each lamp - 8 in total to connect to the 4 bullets in the loom.



So what can I do, this can't be right - Shouldn't there be 8 bullet connectors - 4 for each side of the car?

I don't really want to start hacking apart these 2 new headlamp looms i've got (£11 each) and splicing them together so I can connect them to the 4 bullets.

How was it done as standard?

Cheers

[mike.]

Had another look at the wiring and the headlamp wiring coming from the loom (before the bullets) is quite heavy gauge wire - So is it meant to just go into 4 bullets and then on the other side splice into 8 wires?

I could crimp on some new bullets with 2 wires in each one - Would this be ok? I'm not sure what the biggest amp bullets you can get are but i'm pretty sure the most common are 15 amp. If the headlamps are 60 watt, they'll be drawing 5 amps, so i'd have 2 wires drawing 5 amps into 1 15 amp bullet connector so it should be alrite that way, i'm just unsure how it would of been as standard, as i'd rather do it that way if possible.