i was reading the other speedo post by egglick in the hopes of trying to fix my current problem.... ive converted my car from tpi-> carb, ripped out the ecm, wireing harness, etc... i have almost every thing wired up correctly exept the speedo, torque converter and temperature sensor. the speedo wire that goes to the vss buffer thing (yellow box) is green with a black stripe. i ripped appart my whole dash to find this out. now, i dont understand why its not working. do i have to mabey apply power to one of the yellow box wires? or the modual on the tranny mabey? and is it possible to make my torque converter lock up just by twisting a few wires together at the vss box? ive mounted two switches on my dash, one to conroll the second fan, and the other to controll the torque converter. id rather wire things up from the vss thing then have to cut some wires at the tranny and re-route them to the switch. and the temp sensor.... where the **** is this wire???? what color is it??? is it normal for the needle to be pinned at the "overheating" side of the guage if its not hooked up? and does it have to be hooked up to the sensor WHILE its "grounded"(screwed in) to the block to make the gauge go back down? i would really appreciate any and all help on this. thanx

 

Ugh, tell me about it man. These electronic speedometers are major pains. I posted a link to this site in my other post, and that should give you a better idea of what wires do what.

But then again, heh, I tried doing what that guy explains with my car, and the speedo still doesn't work, so maybe you're betteroff not listening to me

 

ive seen that site somewhere before, mabey on the tech articles section of this site. i printed it out and hoped the information would be acurate..... but unfortunately it seems none of my vss wires go to the ecm, or out the passangerside fender wall/hole. i tracked that green with black stripe right to the speedometer and its connected fine, i tested it out too to make sure it wasnt cut or broken. im thinking i shou ld just cut all the wires and re-wire it all myself. all the wires exept one green one comeing out of the tranny "sending unit" go in to the dash through the drivers side. that page says passanger side. im asumeing the purple and yellow wires that go to the sending unit are refering to the one on the tranny? if those somehow got cut, how will i know wich purple wire its talking about? thers like 2 purples comeing out, a yellow and a green i think from the tranny. i dont suppose you know wich wire(s) lock up the torque converter huh? this car has to be on the road by monday so i can get to work

 

My car has two connections that go to the yellow buffer box. The first has the purple and yellow wires that go to the trans, and the other has the pink, green, black, and browns.

The pink wire is 12V power, and the black is the ground. These both go to the gauge, as does the green wire, which must be the one that carries the converted signal for the gauge to read.

From what I can gather, the browns are the ones that go to the ECM, and it controls the torque converter, etc. I could be wrong though, so if anyone more knowledgable knows otherwise, please correct me.

If you don't mind me asking, if you went from TPI to Carb then why did you pull out the buffer and all the wiring to the speedometer when it should have allready been correct??

Anyway, I also found that the article was wrong about where the purple and yellow wires exit the interior.....that must've been different with the eariler cars.

I really wish we both could get a little more help with this problem though. So far I've made zero progress, and I keep getting conflicting info on what the ECM has to do with this.

 

The pink wire needs a switched +12v source, this powers the VSS 'on'.
The ECM locks the converter based on input from the VSS (brown wire).

A little more about VSS operation if anyone cares...
https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...hreadid=148452

Psyte.. I'd guess depending on year, the purple & yellow VSS wires differ where they run. I do remember when redoing the wiring in my 'bird ('87), the VSS wires were bundled with the ECM wiring but not part of the ECM wiring (i.e. all taped together). In your case it could be that you chopped off the VSS wires by accident. The VSS will be in the tailshaft of the trans where normally, a speedo cable would be. The green/purple/tan wire (on one plug) are to the TC solenoid.

For your temp gauge, if the green wire that goes to the gauge sender is grounded, it will peg. The gauge will not do anything if unplugged from the sender, it should still peg while cranking the car though.

Hope that helped answer at least a little something...

 

thank you for replying, oh holy deadbird. i was wondering where you were these last two days of my suffering. egglick, i didnt rip out my vss buffer, i didnt even touch it. for some reason, it just doesnt work. and mine only has 1 brown wire comeing out of it and one red wire. yes, its all red, no stripe or anything, could this be a power wire mabey?

 

also, how do i lock up my torque converter? i have a yellow, two purples, a green and a tan with black stripe comeing out of it. the green goes no where, the tan w/ black stripe seems to set off the fasten seatbelt noise/ light. i have tryed appling power to both purples and nothing happens exept a gauge fuse blows. how will i know if the torque converter locks? the speedo isnt so important, but i NEED the temp sensor and torque converter. i was looking at the diagram in the haynes manual and it mentions a fourth clutch switch in the same box as the torque converter control, what do i need to do to get the torque converter to lock up by a switch? i already have the switch mounted in my dash, i just need to connect the proper wires. help me deadbird-wan kenobi, your my only hope

 

Ok.. I've worked off my laughing ... sorry to make your last 2 days so agonizing .. I doubt you're going to get any further with my help anyways lol

Now.. I don't know exactly how TC lockup works w/i the tranny but, I do have a (vague) grasp of how it's wired. From what I see, The green wire is powered by the ECM (or ign switched +12v in your case since no ECM), what this does inside the rans is a mystery to me. It is switched w/in the trans though, I'm guessing by the solenoid (?).
The purple wire supplys ign switched +12v (from the gauges fuse circuit) to the solenoid thru the brake switch (closed normally untill the pedal is pressed) and the tan/black wire is a ECM controlled ground and also runs to the 'F' terminal of the ALDL. I know you can manually grnd the F terminal to lock the converter. The purple & tan wires merely power the solenoid. How the green wire operates, I don't know. Wiring says 'normally open in top gear' which means to me that the switch side the green wire is on is closed untill converter lockup. I don't know.. I'm not that smart to know how that works. If I were to do something like that, I'd wire the tan & purple wires to a switch 1st and see what that does than, add in the green wire if no results. This would be better answered someone with a bit more greymatter than me or on the trans. board.
I can tell you though that Jegs & Summit both sell a roughly $60 kit to retain lockup with the ECM removed.

As far as the VSS.. pink, red.. could be one in the same, your best be is to compare how the wires are laid out to this pic (below).. the circled wire/text is ign. +12v to the VSS which, if your harness plug is laid out the same, you're in good shape..

*edit.. pic removed..I took a "better" pic of the VSS in the next post

 

While this isn't a much better picture (crappy digi cam).. it's at least a little closer and you can see the wire better and I labeled them to where you can actually read what is what.

 

thanks for the reply deadbird. you put alot of effort into your posts, not many people do that. one more thing though, do you have any idea wich side of the engine bay the green temperature sensor wire is suppost to come out of? and by peg, you mean the needle will be pinned at "hot" right? my needle always shoots up to the "red zone" every time i turn the key to the "run" setting. its possible i used the green wire to power one of my relays, if it had a 12v current comeing out of it. so if u can tell me wich side of the bay its suppost to come out of, that would narrow my search down ALOT.

 

Thanks Psyte.. I do try my best to help when I have a reasonable clue about the topic.
I might be able to narrow your search down by a small margin...
The temp sender/sensor wire comes off (through really I guess) the bulkhead connector on the firewall (cowl) next to the brake booster. And, by peg, I do mean the temp gauge will max out (hot). Normally, if things are correct, this only happens while the engine is being turned over. The temp gauge is grounded thru the ignition switch while in the 'crank' (trying to start the car) position as a 'gauge sweep test'. If your gauge is pegging just when you turn the ign. to 'run', chances are, you've accidentially grounded/attached the wire to something (other than the sender in the block).
Below I highlighted a pic of where the wire is normally located on the connector. I would question (even ) you using this as a power source since it is not (normally, unless you've really fudged the under-dash wiring,) a powered wire.

 

hmm..... how does it recive a signal from the temp sensor if it has no power running through it, and it conencts to the sensor wich is already grounded to the block?? surely there should be some kind of power running through the wire? oh well.... that diagram on the left is it a representation of the fuse panel? man, a guy like me should not be doing all this wireing.... ive never even taken an electroics course in high school.... none of my friends will even touch this with a 10 foot pole.

 

The gauge measures resistance to ground. The needle arm winding is powered constant and it acts/moves accordingly to how much resistance the sender gives between it and true ground. (that may not be explained correctly at all but, I've never taken a single electronics class in my life either )

 

is it ok to run dual fans all the time? besides it being hard on the fans, is there any benefits or unhh.... non-benifits to have them on all the time? since i dont have a clue what my engine temperature is, i just keep them on during the morning rush to work just incase its even "slightly" overheating. plus i have alot of exposed wires, and it would really suck if they started melting from the heat in the engine bay..... one thing is for sure, it takes like 10 minutes for my heater to turn the interior into a sauna. i would rather burn out a $50 - $100 cooling fan then a 2000 dollar engine. also.. is it normal for the "volts" indicater to be at uh.... 3/4 on the guage? i dont rerember the number, it just goes like 8 13 and some other number..... its whatever is bettween 13 and that last number

 

I don't think the fans will mind running constant quite as much as the alt. They do require a descent amount of juice. Wearing out your alt a little quicker than normal is about the only drawback (that and it will cause more load/drag on the motor due to increased demand).
Don't trust the volt gauge, if you have even the crappiest of voltmeters, confirm the voltage at the battery or terminal at the back of the alt. for true voltage. The 'tick' between 13 & 18 would be 15v, the gauge appears to go in 5v increments starting at 8.

 

it wouldnt be so bad if i killed that alternator. its designed for computer controll i guess. i could be wrong though... but that thick a$$ wire is totaly useless, if i hook it up, it some how makes every light in the car flicker. if i leave it disconnected, everything seems fine, exept when i stop, then the lights flicker slightly, but not half as bad as they do with the fat wire hooked up. if i kill it, ill swap in a alternator that will charge at a decent rate at all times even when the car is stopped