Gauges wiring

[SamoYU]

Hello

 

I am again asking for help, I want to set up a temp gauge and i would like some detail instructions on how to do that, for reference I have never done any electrical work myself so i do not know exactly what am I doing. 

 

The scheme says one wire from sensor is going to engine ground and the other to the gauge. Where do i find engine ground point?

 

The - wire from the gauge also goes to the eng ground.

The + goes to the ignition switch or some other 12v source. Where can i source that since the ignition switch only has a connector to the wiring.

 

The gauge also has a light in it and obviously a + and - pin, where can i wire them to?

 

Thanks for the help.

[adamzan]

Any bolt on the intake will be grounded, there is one near the front to the left of the distributor that has some ground wires already, you could unbolt it and add an extra eyelet terminal there. Or just go straight to the negative terminal of the battery. Inside the truck any of the metal brackets should be grounded under the dash. I believe I used the cigarette lighter circuit when I did this on mine years ago. That will be ignition switched 12v as well.

 

As for the light, you should be able to tap into the wire that dims the radio lights. If you look in the service manual it will have the correct diagram.

[level9]

1 hour ago, adamzan said:

As for the light, you should be able to tap into the wire that dims the radio lights. If you look in the service manual it will have the correct diagram.

 

Be careful with this. The car's illumination system is a 2-wire (+ and a dedicated ground) that both connect to a rheostat (I believe ground based) in order to vary the voltage for dimming. If you connect only the trigger wire and then ground it out you can cause strange things to happen to your electrical system. I'm not sure if this has ever happened to a Pathy owner but others with these older 2-wire illumination systems have even fried their clusters.

 

If the gauge truly supports this configuration (CONFIRM !) then you will need both illumination wires which should be paired together - pink/blue (+) and pink/black (-) for the dimmable lighting which you can get at the radio location or the rheostat itself.

If it does not support this old-school dimming (seems more likely to me) then it will only have 1 trigger wire for illumination and it expects a full +12v signal, not variable voltage. When I did my aftermarket headunit (most do not support variable dimming) I ended up tapping the parking lights wiring (at the base of the steering column) for a clean +12v signal.

[SamoYU]

Thank you both for help. The idea of tapping the parking lights seem the best to me and will probably go with that.

 

I noticed the previous owner had a CV station bellow the radio and there is also a connector with 2 wires would that work? for right now the light in the gauge is not important but good to know for later :).

 

Has anybody tried removig the EGR from the 2.7td, how did you manage it?

[level9]

43 minutes ago, SamoYU said:

I noticed the previous owner had a CV station bellow the radio and there is also a connector with 2 wires would that work? for right now the light in the gauge is not important but good to know for later :).

 

 

No way of knowing how they wired it without tracing the wires but presumably if it turns on and off with the car, sure.

 

44 minutes ago, SamoYU said:

Has anybody tried removig the EGR from the 2.7td, how did you manage it?

 

no diesels here in the US that I'm aware of but theoretically you could add a block-off plate (+ gaskets!) between the EGR and the intake which would be the best solution since it doesn't mess with the ECU - assuming your goal is to simply disable the functionality. The problem you're going to likely have is getting the EGR tube off which is likely rust-welded to the exhaust after 30+ years.

 

[SamoYU]

Update. 

 

I wired the gauge and testet it out directly to thr battery and it works great now i will wire it to the cigarette lighter or the cb wires if they work :).

 

Hm thank you I will leave it for now and bother with that when i make new 2.5in exhaust and add the intercooler. 

 

Will keep you guys posted for the build :).

Thanks for the help.