Dashboard - part 5

So the gauges were in place. Just a case of wiring up these gauges and the switches!

I had not considered that there was a standard layout for the gauges and that the dasboard loom was made for this. Because I had come up with my own layout, this meant that I had to chop quite a few tie wraps and extend some of the cables. Also the billet switches for the start and hazard lights had smaller terminals, so I had to source these connectors and replace the existing ones.

I am not installing a clock, so the wires provided in the loom for this were not needed. As the ETB gauges do not need a voltage stabiliser, there were a further three wires that were not used in the loom. I connected the light green wires designed for the stabilizer to the darker green wire, so that the 'stabilised' gauges had a normal ignition 12v power supply.

Next I puzzled the Lucas type switches for the lights and heater. Six terminals, but only five wires - so what goes where? Each of the terminals on the switches were marked with a number from 1 to 8 (3 and 5 were not used, hence six terminals). Here Noel Hirst and Keith Akerman helped clear up my confusion with some photos.

I had realised that in the loom there is a red/white wire for each switch which is the illumination and a black wire for each which is the ground for the illumination. As there is no illumination on these switches, these wires can be ignored/not used (needed to make sure that there was no risk of shorting). So each switch just had three wires connected in reality. The light switch was wired as follows: brown/blue to terminal 1, red terminal 4 and blue terminal 8. For the heater it was: green to terminal 4, green/slate terminal 6 and green/yellow terminal 8.

Oh, and the Canems immobiliser! This is fitted to the rear of the dashboard, close to the steering column on the right side when seen from the driver's seat so that the fob can de-activate it. The unit is about 50mm square and needs mounting with the plastic surround against the dash (flat on, not on it's edge). I had not allowed for this and it was very tight up against the hazard switch, so if you are doing this be aware! Plan ahe.. I had to trim away some of the dash around the steering column to allow it to fit.

Immobiliser unit against steering column hole

I have decided to mount the remote trip/function push switch on the centre under dash cover. There is enough room to get your hand in between the lower part of the dash and the transmission tunnel to activate this. The remote switch comes with the ETB speedo and is part of the 'speedo loom'. This location saves having an additional item on the dashboard, which in my opinion, just clutters the thing. Some other makes of gauges have the trip switch on the face.

Apart from these issues, the wiring was fairly straight forward. I used the GD Dash Loom wiring diagram and the diagrams from ETB. Some of the wires were not used, so these were taped back on themselves, making sure that the conductors were not exposed. Others wires needed connecting to the GD loom, such as the speedo and tacho 'looms'. I have not given the full wiring, as this may differ depending on the gauges and switches used.

Spaghetti!

The column stalks have their own mini looms, which are not terminated at one of the ends. These mini looms connect into the relevant multiplug on the dashboard loom, but needed terminals adding to those wires that are used.

Terminals added to column connection multi-plugs