Headlight warning chime
I am in the process of fixing some wiring issues and have my dash harness out of the car and am planning on stripping the seatbelt interlock wiring out of the harness. Yesterday it occurred to me that maybe I should revisit this in case it worked out to add a chime for a headlight warning at the same time.
The missing piece of the puzzle (for me) was how to trigger the headlight warning chime.
So, out of curiosity, I looked up a headlight switch for an F-Body and compared it to an A-Body one.
Here are images of the spades on first an A-Body switch and then an F-Body one:
Notice the additional 2 spades on the bottom right of the F-Body switch. Come to find out, those are connected when the headlight switch is in any position except off. With that connection, a wire from the chime to one spade and to a ground on the other would create the connection needed to tell the chime that the headlight are on.
The F-Body plug is different in the retaining clip locations and the additional 2 spades, but it does appear that the original headlight plug on the A-Body harness should plug into the switch and leave the additional spades open to have wires added without issues. This solves having to track down an F or M Body to get the plug.
Here is a A-Body switch followed by the F-Body switch:
The F-Body switch is physically larger, but the end where it bolts to the IP is the same size. I haven't had a chance to check it against my IP, but I don't think it will be an issue. It really isn't that much larger.
I ended up grabbing an M-Body switch and plug last night so I can say that the M-Body switch is wired and functions the same as the A-Body switch so no issue there. Looks like it should be a simple swap to pull the wires from the A-Body plug and replace them in the M-Body plug. Or just use the original A-Body plug and add a couple of wire to make this almost a slam dunk.
Only issue I can think of so far is the spades on the chime don't appear to be spaced correctly to use any plugs I have available. This means I will have to add some shrink wrap over the female connector on each wire and plug them in one at a time (and in the correct order) to make the connection at the chime. Looks like this chime came in several GM vehicles so maybe I can find a plug there or something.
Either way, I think I can get the headlight warning working.
I am in the process of fixing some wiring issues and have my dash harness out of the car and am planning on stripping the seatbelt interlock wiring out of the harness. Yesterday it occurred to me that maybe I should revisit this in case it worked out to add a chime for a headlight warning at the same time.
The missing piece of the puzzle (for me) was how to trigger the headlight warning chime.
So, out of curiosity, I looked up a headlight switch for an F-Body and compared it to an A-Body one.
Here are images of the spades on first an A-Body switch and then an F-Body one:
Notice the additional 2 spades on the bottom right of the F-Body switch. Come to find out, those are connected when the headlight switch is in any position except off. With that connection, a wire from the chime to one spade and to a ground on the other would create the connection needed to tell the chime that the headlight are on.
The F-Body plug is different in the retaining clip locations and the additional 2 spades, but it does appear that the original headlight plug on the A-Body harness should plug into the switch and leave the additional spades open to have wires added without issues. This solves having to track down an F or M Body to get the plug.
Here is a A-Body switch followed by the F-Body switch:
The F-Body switch is physically larger, but the end where it bolts to the IP is the same size. I haven't had a chance to check it against my IP, but I don't think it will be an issue. It really isn't that much larger.
I ended up grabbing an M-Body switch and plug last night so I can say that the M-Body switch is wired and functions the same as the A-Body switch so no issue there. Looks like it should be a simple swap to pull the wires from the A-Body plug and replace them in the M-Body plug. Or just use the original A-Body plug and add a couple of wire to make this almost a slam dunk.
Only issue I can think of so far is the spades on the chime don't appear to be spaced correctly to use any plugs I have available. This means I will have to add some shrink wrap over the female connector on each wire and plug them in one at a time (and in the correct order) to make the connection at the chime. Looks like this chime came in several GM vehicles so maybe I can find a plug there or something.
Either way, I think I can get the headlight warning working.
