Texas_Black_5.0
New Member
Hello all,
I planned on making this thread sooner but every time I tried the act of typing out my steps helped me to realize there was something else I should check, and that has gone on for a little while now. So this is more of a "where I'm at and how I got here" thread, not the desperate plea for help I thought it was going to be. Long story short my car was slowly draining the battery, some parasitic load. I started pulling fuses under the hood and that led me to the fuses inside the car, to fuse 8. I looked and saw everything on the other end of that fuse, and figured this could easily be a big instrument cluster nightmare. So I figure before I got that deep into all this I'll get the state safety inspection done on it and get the thing legal.
I hadn't messed with this car at night, so I hadn't turned on the headlights in years, the inspector pointed out the driver side headlight was really dim, too dim to pass inspection. No problem, I'll replace the bulb, replaced the bulb, still dim as can be. Cool, it's not the bulb, then I notice that with the car turned off, no accessories or anything on, if you turn on the headlights, the driver side blinker indicator (inside the cab) glows ever so slightly, if you turn your left blinker on when this is happening, the indicator light goes out, if you unplug the headlight, without the blinker on, the indicator glows much brighter...
OK, so this is looking suspicious, I decided to get more in depth into what the wiring for that blinker light looked like. It looked like this:
So basically, the connector, spliced into three brown wires, spliced into blue wires, clipped into the infuriating connector block things, into the cars stock wiring. Plus a yellow wire just hanging out. Got to asking the previous owner (my dad) and he pointed out the aftermarket mirrors with blinkers on them that he paid someone to install. He seems to remember the wires for the blinkers on the mirrors being blue. There is some blue connector nonsense going on with the other light as well.
I'm getting rid of the aftermarket mirrors, buying new pigtails for both blinkers, and rewiring the whole thing. Has anyone done this before? I've worked in the electronics field for years so I'm confident I'll be able to get it done, I have the schematics. Does anyone know what the part name to the pigtails I'm looking for is? Are they common enough than I can just run down to autozone for them or am I going to have to order them and wait? How long are the wires that come out of the back of the pigtail when it comes? Long enough to splice back into the stock wiring, getting rid of all that excess stuff, and still reach to the light assembly? I'm trying to get rid of as many connections as possible.
Thanks for any help anyone can offer.
I planned on making this thread sooner but every time I tried the act of typing out my steps helped me to realize there was something else I should check, and that has gone on for a little while now. So this is more of a "where I'm at and how I got here" thread, not the desperate plea for help I thought it was going to be. Long story short my car was slowly draining the battery, some parasitic load. I started pulling fuses under the hood and that led me to the fuses inside the car, to fuse 8. I looked and saw everything on the other end of that fuse, and figured this could easily be a big instrument cluster nightmare. So I figure before I got that deep into all this I'll get the state safety inspection done on it and get the thing legal.
I hadn't messed with this car at night, so I hadn't turned on the headlights in years, the inspector pointed out the driver side headlight was really dim, too dim to pass inspection. No problem, I'll replace the bulb, replaced the bulb, still dim as can be. Cool, it's not the bulb, then I notice that with the car turned off, no accessories or anything on, if you turn on the headlights, the driver side blinker indicator (inside the cab) glows ever so slightly, if you turn your left blinker on when this is happening, the indicator light goes out, if you unplug the headlight, without the blinker on, the indicator glows much brighter...
OK, so this is looking suspicious, I decided to get more in depth into what the wiring for that blinker light looked like. It looked like this:
So basically, the connector, spliced into three brown wires, spliced into blue wires, clipped into the infuriating connector block things, into the cars stock wiring. Plus a yellow wire just hanging out. Got to asking the previous owner (my dad) and he pointed out the aftermarket mirrors with blinkers on them that he paid someone to install. He seems to remember the wires for the blinkers on the mirrors being blue. There is some blue connector nonsense going on with the other light as well.
I'm getting rid of the aftermarket mirrors, buying new pigtails for both blinkers, and rewiring the whole thing. Has anyone done this before? I've worked in the electronics field for years so I'm confident I'll be able to get it done, I have the schematics. Does anyone know what the part name to the pigtails I'm looking for is? Are they common enough than I can just run down to autozone for them or am I going to have to order them and wait? How long are the wires that come out of the back of the pigtail when it comes? Long enough to splice back into the stock wiring, getting rid of all that excess stuff, and still reach to the light assembly? I'm trying to get rid of as many connections as possible.
Thanks for any help anyone can offer.
