1969 Dodge Charger wiring issues, no brake lights, bezel lights, flasher, dome

[rikubot]

My dash wiring was completely make-shift and my gauges were mounted on a piece of wood. The previous owner had all aftermarket gauges, and all the engine wiring was also his own creation. He had spliced the headlight harness and wiper harness into his wiring, and riveted a plate over the hole where the bulkhead connector was located. I recently purchased a dash and engine harness from Year One. I cut out all the wiring I could tell was his and on the dash side was left with mostly plug-and-play connectors, less the body lights and one or two other small things. Under the hood I began splicing the wiring back into the correct location on some salvage yard bulkhead connectors I cleaned up. I have everything hooked up into the bulkhead on the engine bay side EXCEPT the four wiper wires. On the interior side, I don't have the door switches, radio, heater, brake pedal, cigarette stuff, light by ignition, speedo and clock (no big deal), or console lights hooked up. I'll post a bunch of pics in that thread to show you what I've got going on under my hood.

What I have working:
- Car starts
- Headlights work (brights too)
- Reverse lights work (had to make Neutral safety plug out of salvage parts)
- Neutral safety seems to work
- Tail lights work
- Turn signals
- Left turn indicator
- Alternator Gauge

What I don't have working:
- the three gauges on circuit (assuming voltage limiter, going to do the solid state mod when parts come in)
- gauge back lights
- dimmer switch
- flasher switch
- right turn indicator
- dome light
- door switches (not hooked up anyway)
- washer fluid button
- brake lights
- brake indicator light (assuming it lights when E-brake is engaged?)
- wiper switch (no big deal as it isn't hooked up

I'm sure I left a few things out. My main concern is with the gauge stuff not working. It's mostly plug-in stuff so I figured it was a no brainer. Does it have to be bolted to the dash to work? I usually don't bother as I have to have it out all the time anyway since I'm trying to get it all dialed in. I'm pretty familiar with the diagrams but I have no experience with electrical and It takes me a while to figure routing out. But, so far, so good with the harnesses I've made (other than the gauge issues haha).

Any tips for grounds would help a lot too. I just realized that my column doesn't have a ground on it and apparently its supposed to? Ground locations would be awesome too!

Thanks for your time, it is very much appreciated.
-Mike

 

[440roadrunner]

Don't understand your comment about dimmer switch and "headlights work." The light switch feeds TO the dimmer, then high and low beam power comes off the dimmer.

"flasher switch?" You mean hazard? You do know it's a separate flasher from the signal flasher? The older (separate) hazard flashers are essentially a 4 pin switch, when turned on hook all 4 terminals together. One terminal is power coming "out" of the flasher, one line for brake light line feeding into the TS switch and one for left front, the last for right front

Right turn indicator likely a cluster problem, either PC board connector loose pins, or poor socket or ground, or even bulb

Brake lights.......you checked for power in and out of the brake light switch? The switched side of the switch feeds INTO the column TS switch, so if you have power at the output of the BL switch, and no lights but good turn signals, then you have a bad column TS switch

Brake indicator: is an isolated socket, get's ignition power on one side, and "goes to ground" through the switch pin on your front / rear valve in the brakes down on the driver side frame. It branches off and goes to a grounding switch on the parking brake, so either one will activate the lamp

The column needs a ground for stuff like the horn button, and "if" you have a "key in" lamp or column shift lamp

THE CLUSTER should have an ADDED ground by you, bolted to the column support, etc

Gauge back lights: All dash dimmer controlled lamps "are a trick."

The headlight switch gets TWO power sources, one, UNfused, for headlights ONLY

The tail lamp fuse supplies tail lamps AND power TO the dash lamp dimmer, so the tail circuit must work FIRST

The power then goes through the dimmer, and out on tan. This tan feeds dimmer controlled power down TO the fuse panel to the INST fuse, and then OUT to all dimmer controlled lamps on ORANGE wiring.

Might be that, or again, problems on PC board connector, cluster ground, bad sockets, corroded PC board, or bad bulbs

 

[rikubot]

Don't understand your comment about dimmer switch and "headlights work."

I meant to refer to the Panel light dimmer switch on the dash. Sorry, I get carried away when typing and lose some vocabulary. And yes I do mean "hazard". I was just going off the label on the bezel. Yes I traced the two flasher sockets on the diagram to the proper devices. Both flasher units do work. That makes sense in how they operate. How often do the hazard switches themselves fail? This seems unlikely but I'm just guessing.

Right turn indicator likely a cluster problem, either PC board connector loose pins, or poor socket or ground, or even bulb

Forgive my lack of experience, but is the 'PC board' the green circuit board behind the fuel-temp-oil gauges?

I have not checked for power out of the brake light switch, I will do that tomorrow morning. One thing I did notice about my TS switch, in the number 5 slot on the harness side I have an orange wire, and on the TS switch connector this slot is empty. The diagram shows a bulb with 18G orange wire. Is this where a column shift lamp would go?

-The column needs a ground for stuff like the horn button, and "if" you have a "key in" lamp or column shift lamp

-THE CLUSTER should have an ADDED ground by you, bolted to the column support, etc

When I ground the column, do I ground it to the bottom of the dash? And is there anywhere specific to bolt the additional ground to on the cluster?

Gauge back lights: All dash dimmer controlled lamps "are a trick."

Any tips or helpful links? Or should I sack up and save up for the $175 repops on eBay?

Thank you so much 440roadrunner. I have seen your wisdom on many posts during my searches for answers and I'm very glad you stopped by to help.

 

[440roadrunner]

Dash dimmer may be mis-wired, but these DO simply go bad.

Yes, PC board meant your cluster printed circuit. "Some of" what was wrong on my 67, may or may not apply:

PC connector pins were broken, or loose. Repair and re-solder. Mine was bad enough, and I didn't want to buy a repop board, that I simply soldered pigtails to the board traces and ran them off to Molex type connectors, replacing the factory connector completely

Next, on mine the socket contact fingers for the instrument regulator were actually NOT making contact with the board traces. I had to solder jumpers across

The gauge studs (nuts) can get loose Replace them with "real" nuts and work them back/ forth to scrub the board clean.

Use fine skotchbrite, etc or even a eraser on the bulb socket mounts to clean the board. Just use your head

I would think hazard switch failure is rate as they don't get used very often. But as old as these girls are............

The orange in your colum connector is certainly for a dash light. All orange wiring is dash dimmer controlled lighting.

Cluster ground just follow the traces. One terminal of the IVR is ground, and one side of all the dash lighting, turn and hi beam indicators is ground. These all tie into common traces, which are connected to the cluster casting by screws. So any of those points are a place to hook a pigtail. Yes, bolt to either column support or bottom of dash. Just leave some slack to "get to it."

175 repop? For what?

I assume you have a shop manual? You can download 'em free over at MyMopar. A few of them "over there" came from the guys on FABO

 

[rikubot]

My PC board looks to be in pretty good shape. I did clean up the contacts for the bulbs and the bolts where the gauges attach. I also put a little dielectric grease on the surfaces. Surprisingly the pins in the board were nice and tight.

The repop I was talking about was the Panel Light Dimmer switch. If that's what it takes for back lighting I guess I will eventually have to do it, but it can definitely wait. As far as my three gauges (fuel temp oil) I have a friend who is gonna let me try one of his voltage regulators to see if my three gauges read, but I need to make sure they have a good ground going to that tracer first. I'm going to do some investigating with my TS switch right now. Everything looks good and it's fairly new but from everything I've read it is the culprit a lot of the time.

I did not have a shop manual but I just downloaded it.

Update: I found that my right turn indicator bulb had a broken filament but indicator actually DOES work, and I also found that the hazard ONLY works when a turn signal is on. Still puzzled on the whole brake light thing, especially since the turns, hazard, and tail lights all function. Does all this point to the turn signal switch? Everything about my switch looks so dang good. My buddy stopped by after work to check out my wiring but did not have his tester with him. One thing I should note: I don't have the horn attached nor the wheel while I am doing the dash, would this affect brake lights or turn signal switch functions?

Back to the gauge backlighting. I was wondering, is there a way to make a jumper wire to bypass the dimmer switch just to see if the back lights and other orange wire lights work? If this is possible, it would tell me whether or not my dimmer isn't functioning.

Another update:

I was able to bench test my gauges and PC board with a couple of double A batteries and I got readings from all three gauges and my back lights lit up. Finally a little good news! Also, I took my T/S switch out and saw some splicing in the middle of the wiring on the harness. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there should be no splicing on these wires? I haven't made a test light yet but I'll do that for my T/S switch later today. I work in the driveway and it's in the 90s so I'm cooling off. Now I'm leaning even closer to T/S switch (like everyone on the web has suggested so far lol). Anyone know where to find a new switch that isn't $100?