----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Jose <mwjose@home.com>
To: <mgs@autox.team.net>
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 6:13 AM
Subject: panel/gauge light problem 79 B
> I have a problem with the panel lights for the gauges
> fading and eventually dying every time i drive the car. I played with
> the rheostat and as I turn it, the lights will fade on and off. I poked
> underneath and the rheostat gets very hot when the lights are on. My
> schematic shows 4 wires going to the rheostat, 3 red and whites and one
> red and green. All four of these wires are connected. also, I never
> touched any of the gauges or lights when replacing the harness. Any
> help would be appreciated.
The rheostat can get very hot during use. At max brightness it is supposed
to short out the resistance altogther, but often a very small amount is left
in circuit, and this causes the greatest amount of heat to be generated and
can burn it out. Your wiring sounds OK, the problem is probably in the
rheostat, but they are very expensive to replace. If you are not bothered
about being able to vary the brightness my cars have one spare spade on each
of the two connections on the rheostat so it is a simple job to change over
the wire from one connection to the spare spade on the other and so bypass
the rheostat altogether.
> A couple of identifications, if anyone knows these:
> I had some wires that were cut/ not used on my old harness which are
> included in the new one.
> I have a 3-wire connector that comes off the harness by the alternator
> plug, does this go to the distributor?
If it has white, white/blue and white/black wires then it is for the
original 45DE4 electronic distributor. A conventional points/coil system
would only use the white/black.
> a single green wire that comes off the harness at the same point, by the
> alternator, but is very long, the haynes schematic says induction
> heater? what does this do?
Inlet manifold heater.
> finally, i have a brown wire that comes off the harness with 4 other
> brown wires, the other four going to a long, flat, white plastic
> connector, but the single brown was cut...does anyone know where this is
> supposed to go?
My Haynes shows a five-way junction with one brown coming from the starter
solenoid, one going to the hazards via an in-line, one to the starter relay,
and two paralleled together going to the fuse box and the ignition relay,
the lighting switch and the ignition switch.
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