Confused on wiring. 1964 Barracuda.

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Witchboard

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So, I've been working on the 1964 Barracuda. I replaced the clips in the fuse box and wired it up the way it came out. Today, I noticed that one of the 20A fuses was blowing. The fuse is supposed to be for the cigar lighter, but it's not hooked up. It was a yellow wire. I confirmed with multi-meter that it was grounding out. Tried thinking of what I changed recently, and the only thing I did was plug in the door jamb switch. It too has a yellow wire. Ohmed it out and sure enough, that's where it's going. My question is, why?

Whomever had the car before me removed all the interior lights when they reupholstered. No map light, courtesy lights, glove box light etc. The door switch was disconnected. I'm trying to figure out why they would have plugged the door switches in place of the cigar lighter rather than keep them the way they are supposed to be, which looks to me should be a pink wire going to the map light, that no longer exists... if it did before.

The only pink wire coming out of my fuse box is D-3 for my dome (non-existent), stop and tail lights. Is there a reason they would need to plug in that yellow wire to power if it's not going anywhere? Does it have something to do with the headlamp switch since it goes through it?

wiring-highlight.png
 
Some circuits are live all the time (headlights, cig lighter, brake lights)

Some circuits are fed through a fuse from the IGN 1 / ACC cir.

Some are fed by the light switch then through a fuse then to their lamp etc.


The door light cir grounds at the door to light the bulbs that are fed from a fused always on cir.
 
Yellow is traditionally used for the dome light switches which is in the GROUND leg of the dome light. The door switches, and the dome switch on the "twist" headlight knob ground, and complete the dome circuit.
 
A 64 Barracuda may not have had a map light or glovebox light from the factory, even though wiring diagrams would show it.
If someone had simply left the dome light wiring floating around above the headliner. That aint good.
 
Well, I mean, if I have no interior lights, I guess technically there's no reason to leave them connected. The only thing the door switches would be used for is the seat belts on the Sebring convertible seats I installed. My light switch does rotate. Like an on, off click and then I presume brightness but I thought this would be for the dash lights. Is that incorrect?
 
Yes the adjustment is for dash lights but there is a separate switch contact, when twisted ALL the way left (and there usually is a detent) the contact grounds the yellow buss, for the dome/ courtesy
 
Gotcha, so turning on the courtesy/dome lights basically turns off the dash lights. I guess I will need them powered due to the seat belt requirements. From what I can tell looking at the diagram, the door switches appear to be unfused coming straight off the battery connector on the hot side of the fuse box. First thing it goes through is the map light before the door switch. Is it using the bulbs for fuses? It'd basically blow the bulb before melting the wires?
 
67Dart273 said:
Yes the adjustment is for dash lights but there is a separate switch contact, when twisted ALL the way left (and there usually is a detent) the contact grounds the yellow buss, for the dome/ courtesy
Click to expand...
Yeah the rotating part hits what appears much like a light switch in a wall of a home. Inside the switch are the contacts that turn the dome lamp on.
 
Yup, you can feel it.

So am I reading the schematic correctly? Q3 is coming in straight from the battery. M-3 is directly connected to that on the non-fused side. I'm wanting to wire it up the way it should be, but I'm not wanting to burn anything up in the process. Are the bulbs the missing component?
 
What diagram are you referring to and what is the starting points?

I spoke too soon, all I have is 65 which may be different. R6 is the main big red coming in through the bulkhead connector, providing battery power. This goes to the big welded splice, and Q3 feeds from that to the "hot" fuse buss in the fuse panel. So the fuses off that buss feed anything that is always hot, such as the dome circuit, brake lights, etc.

I'm not finding M3 on this one, but if pink it should be the hot feed to the dome circuit. YELLOW is the grounding switch leg that goes to ground through door/ headlight switches.

Find the chart in the manual which lists fuses. That should tell you which fuse the dome circuit was originally fed off of. It may not come direct from the fuse, but may be tapped off elsewhere off a feed coming from one of those fuses.
 
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I've attached a diagram to my initial post, though it may be a bit blurry. I went ahead and wired up everything as it should be with the exception of the door switches while I try and figure out what they did.

I'm wondering if I can just add resistors or something to the wiring. Since there's no bulbs, it's basically a direction path to ground with no load. I'm still digging around the harness. I can't find where they modified it yet unless my car didn't come with a map light. Should be a pink wire coming from the non-fused side to the map light, then to the door switches. Unless I'm misunderstanding what "door automatic switch" means and it's not the switches I'm thinking of. Maybe my car only came with a driver side door switch for lights. I'm not sure.

Heck, I might just get some LEDs to mount under the dash to light the foot wells and wire them in to see what happens.
 
You don't need nor should you plan to add resistors. The only resistance in the original cars was the coil ballast and the wiper motor resistor, the heater motor switch, and the regulator for the gauges, which was a pulsing device designed to simulate lower voltage via that lower duty cycle pulse. So they were not really a resistor

The only time you should need to add any in an upgrade is for LED turn signals, or to dim other lighting LEDs such as for the cluster.
 
That is way too low resolution, where did you get it? If you downloaded it, post the link. The only way you can get res up and post something large, is to crop out sections that you want to show, then post them and notate them. Somewhere around 800x pixels to 1000x pixels square is the default largest you can go.

What I do is get something hi rez, like a shop manual, full screen, crop what I want, make sure it is sized as I mentioned.
 
Good deal. Looks like the forum supports PDF. I just printed the two pages from the service manual to PDF for the pages needed.
 

Attachments

  • diagram.pdf
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67Dart273 said:
The only time you should need to add any in an upgrade is for LED turn signals, or to dim other lighting LEDs such as for the cluster
Click to expand...
And if you are adding resisters to LEDs you are defeating the purpose of using LEDs to reduce current draw.
 
This makes no sense...
X1 is red to feed the cig lighter.

There is no reason to tap off of it, convert to yellow and power the glove box light
Screenshot_20230621-220015.png
 
^^There is if I'm seeing what that diagram indicates, IE the map light circuit originally is unfused.^^ Makes you wonder, tho, if it is a misprint. OP does M3 ACTUALLY connect in the box to the unfused buss?

Another thing you could do is clip that wire and add an inline 5A or so fuse to that circuit. (the glove box lamp)
 
67Dart273 said:
^^There is if I'm seeing what that diagram indicates, IE the map light circuit originally is unfused.^^
Click to expand...
That's fine but what turns it on and off?

In the cir diag there is no switch shown.

Maybe the lamp socket has a reed switch in it and is attached to the door??
(Not feeling it though)
 
Thanks for the help guys. I don't have a glove box lamp. What's got me confused is that I don't have M-3 either. They took off X-1 completely and looks like they connected M2-A where X-1 was supposed to be. There was no right door switch so it just goes to the headlight switch and to the left door switch, but when I plugged the yellow wire into the door switch, it blows the 20A fuse that was installed for X-1. There's nothing plugged into the socket that goes to the open door lamp indicator or any of the courtesy lights. I'm puzzled as to why they did this. I would have though they'd just leave it disconnected since there's no courtesty lights anyway.
 
Dana67Dart said:
That's fine but what turns it on and off?

In the cir diag there is no switch shown.

Maybe the lamp socket has a reed switch in it and is attached to the door??
(Not feeling it though)
Click to expand...
Glove box and switch are all one piece, likely simply not shown
 
Witchboard said:
Thanks for the help guys. I don't have a glove box lamp. What's got me confused is that I don't have M-3 either. They took off X-1 completely and looks like they connected M2-A where X-1 was supposed to be. There was no right door switch so it just goes to the headlight switch and to the left door switch, but when I plugged the yellow wire into the door switch, it blows the 20A fuse that was installed for X-1. There's nothing plugged into the socket that goes to the open door lamp indicator or any of the courtesy lights. I'm puzzled as to why they did this. I would have though they'd just leave it disconnected since there's no courtesty lights anyway.
Click to expand...
I donoo I guess in that case I'd tape it off and wait til you get everything working and see "what does not work." It is common for various cars to have unused wires and connectors in a harness, for options that "aren't there."
 
Maybe PO did some creative rewiring and used existing wires to run other accessories?
 
Dana67Dart said:
Maybe PO did some creative rewiring and used existing wires to run other accessories?
Click to expand...
Maybe. I'm not sure. As far as I can tell, they hooked it up like that for no reason. It doesn't go anywhere. There's no lights and the door switches were disconnected. I'm at a loss. I'll just leave them disconnected until I find something that may not work. Thanks for checking it out with me guys.
 
I rewired my 71 Duster. I broke out the circuits into about 20 some different fuses. With the blown fuse indicators, I can tell what is the problems without tearing into the car to find the problem.
But then again, that's me. I doubt many others have done what I have
 
Pawned said:
I rewired my 71 Duster. I broke out the circuits into about 20 some different fuses. With the blown fuse indicators, I can tell what is the problems without tearing into the car to find the problem.
But then again, that's me. I doubt many others have done what I have
Click to expand...
I've actually jumpered two new fuse boxes to the original. One for switched and one for non-switched power for things I'm adding. For non-switched I jumpered off the spotlight lug since I don't have one and the switched I jumpered off the rear window defogger lug, since I don't have one.
 
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