Ground wire doesn't reach where I hooked up all the others, if I peel back some tape it will
View attachment 26785Or I could put it on the top bolt of the regulator or right in the middle of the ballast resistor?
View attachment 26784
Obviously going into the wayback machine for this post, but with good reason.
That ground wire is for the starter interlock override switch. It is supposed to be under the nut on the lower mounting stud of the wiper motor, meaning the one in about the 7 o'clock position. Y'know what else is supposed to be under that nut on the same stud? The
braided ground strap, whose other end should be bolted to that body-color bracket below the voltage regulator. That ground strap existed solely to ensure the override switch and wiper motor had a solid ground. Stare at wiring diagrams long enough, you start to learn things.
You don't learn enough to know how the override (or even seatbelt module) works, but I'm getting there. I had to pin out the override to make sure I didn't wire the wrong parts to each other or short the damned thing (and any related wiring) to ground. That required going back into the diagrams, which weren't very helpful. I know which pins connect to which when the switch is activated, but looking at the wiring diagrams doesn't explain to me how it functions. In fact, it compounds my confusion. Now I'm not sure simply internally connecting those terminals will have a desirable (or even good) result. My brain tells me the way it was wired originally, pushing the button would crank the engine, but I know that's not the case.
Via a process of elimination and determining what gets connected to what inside the relay/override, I at least figured out one thing: Chrysler got tricky making this system hard to defeat. Without going into too much detail, if you just put a jumper wire between the two yellow wires at the override, which seems to be the obvious solution, you'd destroy both the override and possibly the interlock module itself. One of the yellow wires has continuity to ground, while the other powers the starter relay with 12V+. "
Hey, do you smell smoke?"
There are too many freakin' yellow wires on these cars! At the override switch, there are two. The wiring diagram doesn't indicate which is which--they're both S2 and both 18-gauge yellow. One goes to both the start terminal on the ignition switch and a terminal on the interlock module, and the other goes to the starter relay. The other two pins are a key-on 12V+ (blue) and the ground wire that goes to the wiper motor stud. The switch is like a manual relay: Pushing it down connects one of the yellow wires to ground through a magnet coil (to hold the switch on) while the other connects the other yellow wire to 12V+. The 12V+ wire is not used to hold the switch, so it's either going directly to the starter relay (which would start cranking the engine immediately with no key input, as near as I can tell) or it goes back to the interlock module and start switch, which would simply back-feed to 12V+ at the switch when the key was turned.
Do you understand why I'm confused? The arrangement makes no sense. I'd go and do some continuity testing on my '74 Challenger, but the wires at the override are very different. First and foremost, there are six wires on my car, and two separate connectors. Worse yet, what's on my car actually seems to make some sense to me... more than the factory service manual, anyhow!
Rusty, I need you to get me good pictures of your override connector(s). They should be hanging at the driver's side inner fender, not terribly far from the starter relay. We may have to do more continuity testing. I hope not, but I'm not sure I trust this manual so much. I know the bulkhead diagram was wrong, which we learned together during the last beep session.
I'm going to go look at mine just for fun, and run this past His Elasticity to see what he thinks. I won't be able to look at my car until Saturday at the soonest, though. It's been dark for an hour by the time I leave work, and I have to hoof it over to the storage area. I might as well have sunlight for that.
locking pin in place