Bought a Shift Light.

[SASHO91]

also i just thought of this, could it be that i have it on the fuse panel. i have the power coming from the radio fuse. can that cause the problem? so let me get this straight. i have to run a wire from the battery to the relay, then hook up the green lead wire to the relay, then also the red wire to the relay? im still trying to figure out the web site? also, were do you think i should hook the wire up to, the dis, the tach wire, or behind the dash? and should i put the other diode on the line?

 

[SASHO91]

i dont undertand this shift light. i figure a tach would pull more watts then a light?

 

[SASHO91]

any one else have another solution? im stumped, and i want this thing to work.

 

[SASHO91]

anyone have any ideas. i really need yall to come through, dont let me down guys.

 

[NJSHO]

Have you called the manufacturer and asked?

 

[SASHO91]

yes, but they were no help. the said that even though it was a sho that the wiring would be the same. yeah ok. so i tried the wire that they said and it didnt work either. i think i might try to pu the other diode in today. maybe that will help. i dont know though.

 

[SHO92]

i dont undertand this shift light. i figure a tach would pull more watts then a light?

If doesn't matter if the tach will pull more current then the light, it's the fact that the tach circuit can't supply enough current for both devices.

You need to run a wire off the cig lighter, or the battery or any other 12 volt device, the radio would probably be good so that the circuit isn't on when the car is off.

Thats what the bottom of a relay looks like. Connect the 12 volt power wire(radio, battery, cig lighter, etc.) into the shift light power. Plug the tach signal wire into 85. Plug the shift light ground/input into 87(this is the new tach signal). Plug a ground wire(connected to the chassis) into 86.

This will make a switched ground circuit. The light will have 12+ going to it all the time and the relay will complete the ground to the shift light, when it reaches a certain voltage.
This assumes you have an RPM switch style shift light. If you have something that uses RPM pills this may not work.

You should try finding the directions for the shift light, it will show you exactly how you need to connect it. It won't show you the correct wire to use though. I'd pull the cluster, and connect it there, see if the tach does the same thing.

The more I think about this, this is not what you need for your application. If you bought a premade shift light, the relay and all should be built in. This setup is really only if you are using a seperate RPM switch and light bulb, which is what my setup uses.

 

[SASHO91]

yeah thats what i figured too. i thought that the shift light would already have a type of rpm switch in and it has the selector for the rpm setting on the back. it turns on whenever i turn the car on. also i tried putting in the other diode today, and that did nothing also. another thing that i noticed is that it will only go off when i have it set to under 4k, anything after that it wont go off, but the tach still goes crazy. i know that the shift light is drawing to much voltage, but what i dont get is why didnt the diodes do anything. i got the right ones, right down to the product number. im going to try the relay or somthing, i dont know. i might just hook it up to a switch and turn it on so it looks like it working.

 

[SHO92]

Did you buy the light used? If so, what car was it on before? Shift lights, and RPM switches usually have settings that need to be changed depending on how many cylinders you have. Do you have these settings set correctly? Can you change them at all? Thats about the only other thing I can think of that might be wrong.

 

[SASHO91]

its brand new. the shift light has two wires that are looped back into the shiftlight. one is orange and the other is brown. it says for a 6cyl. app. to cut the brown wire. which i did. after i got fustrated i cut the orange wire, and it did the excact same thing with just the orange wire cut. so then i hooked both wires back up and nothing. as of right now it is just sitting on my dash with positive and negative hooked up and the green wire is just haging there. i never thought it would be this complicated!