anyone have ideas on how you would wire up LED's to light up when the transmission is in a certain gear? light a yellow light for low gear and 2nd and then a green one for drive, a blue for neutral etc etc

i think i could do the wiring just dont know how to tell the gears? maybe something on the piece that the shift cable attaches too....but what "something"?

ideas comments suggestions?

 

Why? Theres already something that does that - the shifter plate...

 

the shifter plate does not do what I just described. It has one light underneith and does not light or change from gear to gear. Thanks Anyway

 

well, the only light that easily comes to mind is the one for reverse. Ya just need to find out what senses when it goes into reverse. If it knows that, I'm sure it knows what other gears it is in, so it probably wouldn't be that hard. But anyway, I'll give it a little more thought in my sleep tonight. I have also wondered if that would be possible to do.

 

Here's an idea to start you off. You connect the positive side of all the LEDs to the positive wire for the shifter plate lamp. Then, you find a way to make the shifter ground the negative side of the LED that indicates the gear you are in.

 

Don't forget to add the proper amount of resistance. 12 volts is a little too much for the LEDs. So, does anyone know exactly how the reverse lights come on when shifted into reverse? Or am i just stupid for asking that question?:lala:

 

The 1990 up cars show exactly what gear the car is in. Swapping the shifter plate is easy, except the Camaro piece has yellow rather than white lettering.

 

OK, well, when I got home today from the dorm for the weekend, the first thing I did was rush into the garage aand rip out the console. I am currently trying to figure this thing out. I hate it when I can't solve problems. There are a bunch of wires going to that black thing by the shifter. I'm about to start crossing those and have someone tell me when the reverse lights light up. At least I'll know which reverse is. After finding out what those wires do, it's only a matter of time before this problem will be solved. I hope someone beats me to it though, because I'll probably screw something up.

 

First of all, for the setup leds are perfect Just make sure you get 12v leds , I don't think it would be that hard to wire the whole setup. Your reverse lights are actuated by a micro-switch hooked to the shifter mechanism. You'd have to set it up so that in different positons the shifter would engage the switches.

 

Here's what I came up with.

By the way ZeroGauge, here's the wire coding from the wire harness going to the shift switch on the shifter.

Yellow/Purple- Park/Neutral (____ LED)
Green- Ground
Blue- Reverse (_____ LED)
Orange w/ black stripe- Overdrive (_____ LED)
Black w/ white stripe- Low (_____ LED)

I figured out the whole wiring as well. All you do is run the positive from the plate light harness to all the LEDs. Then the ground to the coresponding wire. That will give you your shift indicator lights. all you have to do is mount them on a sheet of plastic and mount that under the lettering on the indicator plate. You can probalbly remove the whole white housing and amber color plate as well. On mine, the clear separated from the white housing, so I just need to fabricate another for the LEDs and I'm set.

If I am wrong about any of that, let me know ASAP because I might try this mod tomorrow if possible.

 

http://www.TransAmTemple.com
When this site comes back, he used to have an article describing how to modify the shifter to light up LEDs which he mounted on the dash to have a Heads-Up-Display for what gear he had selected.

To have an indicator of which gear the transmission is currently physically in (the gear doesn't always match what the selector is in as you should know) would require using the existing and probably some additional pressure switches in the valve body and wiring them to trigger certain LEDs when the transmission is in a certain gear. Possibly, some genius on the Transmission Board can help you out with that. I've thought about the same mod and would be interested to hear what they might have to say about it.