Hey all, some monkey totally butchered the wiring in this GTA to hack a Megashifter in. I've looked over the forum and the Chiltons but cannot ID all of the wires in this shifter console. Can someone please tell me what these wires do?

These are the wires it has in the harness coming from the dash side into the front of the console

#10? AWG Purple - twisted to #10 Green/wht stripe and aftermarket ice cube relay
#10? AWG Green/wht stripe - twisted to #10 Purple and relay
#18 DrkBlue - twisted to small Blk wire connected to nothing
#18 Blk/wht stripe - to second ice cube relay
#18 Lt Green - connected to nothing
#18 Orange/Blk stripe - to relay

 

Are you going back to a stock connector? If so, the purple gets undone from the green and they separate. The stock connector MAY have a yellow wire in it that gets connected to the green wire. The relay should NOT have 2 different wires in it, should have only one (on 2 different terminals) IF the relay is an aftermarket starter kill relay. The blue and light green wires would be why your reverse lights don't work.
The orange wire is a wire running to the ECM to tell it when the shifter is in a certain position (have to look it up).

 

There is no connector. After I bought a used stock shifter I saw that it has some sort of connection for one to plug into.

From the bits and pieces I've learned I am assuming there should be a yellow wire that is switched to the purple wire for the neutral start circuit but I have even cut the harness covering back 2" and see no yellow wire.

The neutral start and backup lights dont work so I am trying to figure out what the purpose of these relays is or if they are doing anything before I hack em out but I am afraid to make any assumptions at all after seeing this guys handiwork.

Last night I started disconnecting wires systematically and learned the car would not start if I jiggled the purple and green joint but I dont think they are supposed to be connected directly?

 

The yellow starter wire comes from the ignition switch and runs into the starter enable relay on your 89, where it turns into the green wire (4th gens stay yellow, which is why it can be confusing at the relay since all of the wires are yellow!). The green wire runs to the neutral switch and is connected to the purple when in a neutral range.

The way it's setup now, the engine will crank in ANY gear. It's only supposed to crank in the P and N positions. Which is the purpose of the neutral safety switch (P is another neutral with the park pawl engaged).

The blue and skinny green wires are the wires for the reverse lights. Since they're not connected to anything, the reverse lights aren't going to work. The blue wire is the power feed from the turn flasher (TURN/B/U fuse) and the green is the signal to the lights.

 

Thanks for the info! I really want it corrected but dont want to leave the car inoperable before I figure out what has to be wired.

That explains the mystery of the yellow wire.

Yes, it will start in any gear. Today I cut out the aftermarket relays (since I dont think they did anything as configured anyway) and connected the stock shifter. IMO more importantly than the neutral start is the fact that now the steering lock cable is properly connected (was allowing gear selection without key in ignition).

Since I am forced to deal with this because the console wouldnt even fit over this catastrophe I would like to make it right but it is not a daily driver and I can live with possible start in gear if forced to. The orn? wire that connects to ECM could possibly be disabled? since this car has had chip programming.

To make these work do I only need the connector to connect these to the shifter (where its switched) or is this missing a relay(s) also?

 

Get a connector out of a donor and wire it. The only differences are the green wire and possibly the orange one. However, I believe that the orange wire has something to do with the torque converter lockup or something like that...

 

OK thanks for the help.

 

If you need a connector, let me know. I have my old one down in the basement where I do all of my harness work. I'm not 100% sure all of the wires are there, but I can put some in there. And I may have one on a spare dash harness, but I need to look.

 

Yes I do. If you could PM me the details that would help a lot.

After further examination of the shifter I see inside the switch are brass traces with pins that seem to make connections depending on gear. That kind of dashes my hopes of an alternate wiring means functioning as stock but I did get the stock shifter mounted and functioning but had to nut purple to green.

 

Didn't mean to take so long, but I got the stock connector cut out of the junk harness with about 9" of wire on it. LMK if you're still looking.