Coolant alarm wiring

[Giles B]

Hi All,

My mechanical/electrical incompetence has shone through again, not only have I somehow blown the 60amp fuse on positive wire from the starter battery (a desperate trip to Halfords tomorrow), I also can't quite work out how to connect the Live and Earth wires to the feeds to the back on the cig lighter socket.

So I pulled the black connector off the back of the cig socket and it has a blue (neutral) wire and a brown (fused live) wire stuck inside it with spade terminals. I thought best thing to do would be to pull the spade terminals out, loosen and recrimp with the alarm wires and then replace, but I can't get the spades out.

I have missed a better way of doing this?

Thanks

[g8dhe]

Wiring colours in vehicles don't follow the standard mains colour code! Check the connections as described below rather than guess at the wire colours.

Its not shown on the diagrams which colour the feeds are to the cigar lighter, so you can only work it out from the connections, whichever colour feeds the rear connector inside the body of the lighter socket is +12 volts, the colour that feeds the tubular body of the lighter socket is ground.
The fuse for the lighter is number 8 on the panel down by the drivers knee and is 15 Amps, that should have blown before the 60 Amp fuse so did you do something else to blow that fuse ? If not then that needs understanding first before you continue !

Trying to release the existing crimps is normally a bad plan, if they can be loosened easily then something went wrong when they were originally made! Your best bet is to remove fuse 8 and check that the socket is dead, then carefully expose some bare wire a few inches behind the crimp connection and solder the new wires on and then insulate the bared connections, do them one at a time and make sure there are no hairs of wire left exposed .... before replacing the fuse and testing. Better still follow the wires from fuse 8 back to the wiring loom and you may well find that there is already an insulated bundle of connections as that fuse feeds multiple circuits which are normally brought together in the loom just behind the fuse - its worth checking that first as its normally easier to connect the +12 volts there than elsewhere.

[haydn callow]

You have 2 wires to connect to power up your alarm.
The earth wire......just connect it to any earth point using the ring terminal provided.....then just "splice" in the live to the blue ciggy socket wire....Job done.

[Giles B]

Thanks Haydn, I sorted it in the end by just splicing it in as you say, even managed to install the LED into the dashboard instrument panel. Reveling in my success I tried the temperature sensor mod you described in another thread, I soldered a bit of copper wire across the zener diode and crimped a 110 ohm resistor across the terminals, but I've done something wrong again and the temp sensor needle now doesn't move. I'll be honest I don't really understand how the mode works well enough to diagnose what I've done wrong, any ideas?

[haydn callow]

As long as you put the resistor across the TU & E terminals and did the screws up pretty tight all should be well.
Make sure the resister tags are not shorting out on the circuit tracks...
Don't really see how you could have got it wrong.......you didn't drop the unit or anything ??

[Giles B]

Was pretty careful taking it appart, won't be able to investigate till the weekend.

[Giles B]

Right well I had a good poke around and couldn't work out what was going on, took the resistor off and it still wasn't reading, took the short circuit out and it suddenly started reading. The temp guage is back to normal now. Would be nice to remove the "dead zone" but think I'll need to understand the way it works better first.

[missfixit70]

Why not go for a Mason alarm which does just that & provides a settable alarm, a bit easier to fit - http://www.townace.plus.com/ie/ietemga2.htm