General Wiring help needed please.

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General Wiring help needed please.

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Bedwellty, South Wales.
I've started puting the wiring into the 'Rat this week and am finding it a colossal pain in the posterior, even though I carefully labelled up (mostly) the donor loom. I'm wiring up the starter motor and alternator and there are a couple of wires (I didn't label these, DOH!) that I have no idea what they're for. In the picture below I have identified them with a white box around them. Can anybody please have a look at their car and tell me what they connect to? It's a 1992 FIRE engine by the way. Thanks very much in advance.
panda_wiring.jpg
 
I seem to remember the thick red wire having company on it''s thread...
 
The starter and altinator are earthed by being attached to the engine which is earthed from the battery -ve

That looks like one of the earth's that attach to the bottom of the engine between the block and the sump, there should be 2 studs one for the battery earth and one for that earth near the area shown in the box towards the gearbox.

Just to confirm use a multimeter from one of the +ve's and that -ve.
 

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Alan, I can't find any place to attach these wires to on the block either. If anyone can actually get under their car and have a look I'd really appreciate it. I'm leaving the wiring for now and concentrating on the plumbing. Maybe if there's any Pandas at the car show at Ripley castle I could have a look myself.
 
It doesn't really matter where I attach it then. I'll find an appropriate bolt near to it and attach it to that. It should be really obvious where it was originally attached but I've looked and looked and looked and I just can't see it...

Oh well. Apart from that the build is going well and I got plenty of other stuff done today.
 
I don't have a multimeter so I'll try the bulb method. Cheers for all the help.

I have managed to crank the engine so I'm getting there slowly. It's nowhere near ready to be started though but it was another encouraging sign of progress.
 
On my Panda those earth bolts double up as the lower exhaust support bracket top mounting bolts, if that makes sense. cheers Damon

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Sorry for the quality of the pics

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Cheers Damon. I looked on mine to see if I could see what you mean. Did you mean the exhaust bracket that attaches to the side of the gearbox? If so, then the wire wouldn't reach that far. I have now attached it to the body anyway, as it's definitely an earth.

In other news:
Spent almost all day today laboriously routing the wiring in the engine bay, while mounting all the bits that need wiring up as I went along. Had to unwrap the loom and tease out some of the wires to reroute to suit the new positions of some components and then tape it all up again. However, it was time well spent as the loom looks tailor made to suit the kit and is very neat.

When I came to check stuff I had one or two problems:

Firstly, I plugged a couple of headlight bulbs into their connectors and turned on the lights. Nothing. Checked fuses and found a blown one. Replaced this temporarily with one of the other fuses in the fuse box. Now, when I turned on the lights the component in the picture below started to smoke so I turned them off straight away.
Smoking_component.jpg

I can't find any info about this in the Haynes manual but I presume it's something to do with the lights? There's a coil of wire inside which gets quite hot when the lights are on. I tried it again and it smoked some more then stopped. I'm presuming it's supposed to get hot? It didn't blow any fuses. There must have been some crap on the coil which caused the smoke. Anyway, does anyone know what it's for?

The lights work OK on dip but I can't get main beam unless I hold the stalk back in the flash position. I'm hoping this may just be an earth problem but maybe I have damaged something on the unknown component?
 
Hi, yes that unit is for the lights, either the side or dipped can't remember which but it has been covered on this site before so a search may come up with an exact answer. It is supposed to get hot and you will be correct about it being covered in something for smoke to appear and has burned off so now clear.

It's simmilar to a drop of oil on the manifold being burned off. So nothing to worry about.

As for the main beam it will be an earth or the switch my guess would be the switch.
 
Having looked in the engine bay of Tony's Sisley when I dropped the dizzy off it seems that the brown wires I was referring to DO connect to the alternator positive post. This might explain why I can't get the lights to work, and various other electrical bits.

Another job to tackle next time...
 
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