yep, another thread related to the lights

[87mefull]

Ok, I seem to have a problem with my tripminder wiring. Apparantly if I wire up both grounds, all functions of the tripminder work but my lights don't. (Dash cluster, parking lights, opera lights, and tailights.) It also blows fuse 4 every time you pull the headlight switch also.

So, I simply did not hook up the one ground (tried either one doesn't matter) and it works. If you wire the grounds together and then ground it to the body, it still has this problem. I have all my lights back, but two of the functions of the tripminder do not work (fuel flow and speed). They were connected correctly (wire from pin 34 and the VSS wire). The speed part does not work since I did not hook the wire back up for it, it was more of a hazard than what it was worth since I was having this problem. I left the fuel flow wire hooked up though.

I checked all of the grounds, the ecm wiring harness, the fusible links,
Do I need to run a ground off the Pin 34 wire maybe? Or is the wiring harness for the tripminder bad?

[87mefull]

Also, the illumination wire and the VSS wire are not hooked up.

[85crownHPP]

how many wires does your tripminder have? i also see one ground in the diagram for mine, but it might be different.

[87mefull]

The wiring harness had:

1) Ground/with another ground wire connected to it from another pin in the Tripminder
2) Green/yellow stripe
3) Fuel flow wire
4) VSS wire
5) Illumination wire (blue with a red stripe)
6) White wire/purple stripe


There not in order though, the tripminder is hooked up in the car now so I can't look at it. There were only two wiring harnesses on this tripminder. Is there a diagram for the stock digital clock? It had four wires and a ground, I think I might have hooked up an extra wire that I didn't need.

[87mefull]

Actually, I just took a quick look at the harness, so I would have a better idea. The tripminder actually had two ground wires on its harness, which was different from the diagram in the archive.

The clock harness had the white wire, ground, the green wire, ground. The one plug for the tripminder had white, ground, green, blank.

The other plug from the tripminder had the fuel flow, vss, illumination, ground. I cut the plug off though.

If I hook up the one ground wire (from the harness) to the ground for the tripminder, the fuel flow functions work (speed ones would to if I hooked the wire back up). If I hook both grounds together and ground it to the car, it also works. I loose the lights and blow fuse 4 or 5 though.

[85crownHPP]

hhmm... lemme dig around some more wiring diagrams and see if I can figure out anything...

[87mefull]

Got the tripminder to work today without any problems. If I leave the one ground from the car's wiring harness disconnected and taped off, it works fine and doesn't blow any fuses. All the lights work along with all the functions of the tripminder (hooked the VSS wire back up), no shorts or any other problems. I just hooked up the one ground wire from the tripminder to the chassis, and the other is in the plug that connects to the car's wiring harness.

I looked at one tripminder wiring diagram and apparantly the one ground (that I left disconnected) is live and is connected on the same circuit as the headlight switch?

[83tc]

hrm, weird, anyone know if i can put one in my lincoln?

[85crownHPP]

I bet you can... you should have a VSS and wire to tap, and hopefully you should have a fuel flow wire somewhere, make something thats there for the digital cluster option.