Major Wiring Problems!

[generalachoo]

So right now we got the car and the wiring is becoming really troublesome. We tried to follow the wiring diagram posted in the Manuals section of this website (we would be lost without it thanks ). However, our harness was not in great condition, lots of missing plugs, so that might have made it confusing. Please look at the web link: it should explain things.

We are trying to just crank the car. WE have made sure that the starter works by connecting terminal 50 directly to the battery. Terminal 50 on the starter (the little black plug) is not receiving power though when the ignition switch is fully on. Instead we hear a click from the circuit open relay and nothing else happens. We then removed the starter relay from the drivers side fusepanel (left side for us) and took a multimeter to those pins. When the ignition is on there is voltage to only one of the 4 pins. Is this normal? Do you think our Starter relay is broken?

Right now only the indicator lights and the taillights work. The headlights are not popping up.

Now for pictures of our wiring please check out this website:

http://76.192.130.86/ae86.html

Thanks to all who respond!!

I am really trying to get this working. We have all the major components except the fuel lines so we are just trying to get the car wiring in order before installation of those parts.

[Ivan141]

Okay, wiring is very tedious, and it's hard to get a feel for what you've tried by reading your story, so I'll just jump in here and see if I can help.

Starter circuit: on euro models, the starter is not triggered trough a relay. It's just a direct connection to the ignition switch. This might be different for US models, but I doubt it. Check the wiring @ the ignition switch, try to measure the starter wire from end to end with a multimeter.
Note: if the wiring came from an automatic, there might be a neutral start switch wired in there, which would stop the voltage getting to the starter, but not the circuit opening relay. If this is the case, get rid of it.

Circuit opening relay: This little puppy should switch on during cranking, and after that, the ecu sends it a signal to keep it switched on (has 2 signal coils).

[generalachoo]

There is 1 wire to from the fusible link box + terminal on battery To the starter. It receives a constant 12 V from the battery. There is the terminal 50 also on the starter. When that receives 12 V the starter cranks. It plugs into another black plug on the engine harness. We have this green box on our drivers side fuse panel (left side of the car) that says starter relay.

Can you tell me which angles of pictures I should take to make this more clear?

Thanks very much.

[Ivan141]

Okay, first off, I've been taking a look trough my documentation, you really need the USDM electrical wiring manual for ae86, scanned and provided by our good boardmember parrot. Do a search, I'm sure you'll find it around here somewhere.

Back on topic: The starter relay seems to be there so they could wire in a clutch switch. All it does is is switch on when the clutch is pressed, this then allows the starter signal to pass trough. My suggestion: take it out and jumper terminals 2 and 4, this will create a permanently closed circuit, so you dont need the clutch switch (which is only there to insult your intelligence anyway).
To get a clear picture of what terminals to connect, check the wiring manual by parrot.

Best of luck with the project!

[banpei]

I can't reach your website, so looking at the pictures is very hard... Maybe you can attach them here?

Further: the popup lights are connected to the retraction relay, so my best bet is check if it works...
Otherwise look at the lightswitch, one of the pins (thought the middle) should trigger the retraction relay and it may fail. To check if this is the case just pull the comboswitch (indicator and highbeam) to see if they open... If they open the switch may be faulty...

[generalachoo]

We did all that you said. We jumpered terminals 2 and 4 while taking out the starter relay to create a closed loop. The USDM manual by parrot elucidates a lot but it also is somewhat confusing for us.

The same result happens when we oust the starter relay and bridge the terminals.

Any other ideas?

Would more pictures from different angles help?

[generalachoo]

Engine cranks now...the clutch pedal was a bit messed up it turns out.

However there are two problems I would hope some of you guys could help me rectify.

1) The headlight motors are plugged in. Nothing happens when we turn the headlight switch on except for the side lights turning on (the lamps themselves are not plugged in). When we measure the voltage for the headlight motor plug we get a very low value .07 V. Is this normal?

2) We cannot figure out how to plug the alternator. Does anyone have a good picture of their alternator??

Thanks very much!!

Special thanks to Ivan (without you we would not have tried fixing teh clutch pedal).

[Ivan141]

Since you've got the wiring manual, you can look up how the connectors are supposed to be wired. In the pic of the charging system, there are small circles with letters in them on all connections. These refer to the drawing of the plug they are supposed to be situated on. Then there are also numbers next to those letters, these refer to the corresponding wire nr. The drawings of those plugs are quite simple to understand, just remember your looking at them from the front. You sure you bridged the correct terminals at the starter relay by the way, it's supposed to be the terminals on the relayboard side that correspond to terminals 2 and 4 on the relay (otherwise you will have bridged the clutch switch side of the circuit, which doesnt help much as you may have already noticed).

BTW, chances are any 4age alternator plug will fit in there, for example I'm using an ae82 GT alternator with the ae86 plug, and I'm pretty sure mr2 will work as well.

[generalachoo]

Thanks Ivan,

Starter now turns over. We tried bridging all combinations for the 4 pins (6 combinations) and none of them turned over. However when we pressed the clutch with the starter relay in the car cranks. Thats good enough for us right now.

We currently have two problems:

1) The wires going from the harness to the alternator are messed up--there are about 5 wires that have stripped ends. Three of them should go to the alternator, right?

It is the second to last picture on this URL: http://75.63.16.121/ae86.html

2) Headlight motors are not running. The motors are plugged in. When we flip the headlight switch inside the car, the taillights turn on (Even though no brake is pressed) as well as the side orange lights in the front. The headlights do not flip up and we cannot test if the headlamps turn on since we are missing the plug on the headlight itself.
Therefore, we measured the voltage by putting one probe to each pin in the brown headlight cable on the harness and the other probe of the meter to the negative terminal of the battery. The result: .07 V for 2 terminals and 0 V for another terminal on the pin.

Again, thanks very much for all the help you have given us. It is much appreciated.

[Ivan141]

Cant help much with the headlights.. Never got into those electronics since I have a levin myself. Should all be controlled from a relay though, so if you can find the correct one, maybe you can find out which wires need power so you can do some testing. Have you measured voltages to the motors with the motors unplugged or where they still in there?
Basic operation seems to be: retractor control relay sends a signal to the retractor motors, this signal is wired to the retract relay which switches power to the motors. You could try to do this switching on the retract relay yourself, then work your way up into the more complex control relay.

About the alternator: The fat white wire should be connected to the thread on the alternator, and does not go trough the plug. There should be 3 wires in the plug: white, yellow and black&yellow according to the manual.
Cant see a yellow one in your pic, so could be tricky. Just remember that white is usually a 12v power wire, but do measure to be sure.
You can check it this way though: the black-yellow should be connected straight to the 10A Engine fuse. The yellow one should be connected to the charge light in some way (to the relay, but sometimes directly to the combination meter).