Instrument cluster wiring mess

[mobile206]

So I have a 1985 GL Wagon 4wd that I bought off a friend for $200. It's ugly and rusty but it runs fine and I've been having a lot of fun working on it and driving it around. I was shopping around in the junkyards recently and found a digital instrument cluster from a 1987 GL-10 and I decided to buy it to try to make it work in my car. After a lot of cutting and splicing, I realized this was a bigger project than I wanted to get into, and the digital cluster really isn't that cool anyway, so now I am working on going back to the original. The problem is, I do not have a wiring diagram that shows where the original wires are supposed to go, and when I was trying to make the digidash work, I pulled wires from their original locations without keeping track of where they were originally. I have Alldata, but it only shows where the wires are pinned in the connectors, and it doesn't identify the colors of the wires, so I am kind of lost. Alldata has very limited information for 1985 cars. Does anyone have a diagram or maybe some photos of what wires go where? I know this has been discussed before, but all the links to diagrams seem to be dead ends.

[AdventureSubaru]

The digi-dash is pretty cool but they failed regularly. Good call on going back. I don't have any pics, but someone on here might.

 

If not, I'd take a trip to a junkyard and bring a camera with you. Get a few good shots so you can reference each of your wiring harnesses.

 

Also - for the splices, shrink tubing is your friend. Better than using tape or connectors and playing wiring games a couple years down the road when the corrosion starts.

[Cougar]

Ebay is good place to find used factory manuals for your car at reasonable prices. There are no substitute manuals better than a factory manual. I think the wiring is covered in the manual  marked Section 6, even though there are only four manuals in the set.

[mobile206]

Thanks for the good advice. I finally got it figured out. I used a test light and spent a few hours testing all the wires to see what gets power or ground under what conditions, and what goes where.  I also noticed that most of the circuit board on the instrument cluster is labeled, so that made things easier. The display in the center of the cluster, with the 4wd indicator lights, high beam, door open, etc, has one ignition+ wire, and all the bulbs are powered by switched ground wires. And they are all labeled, so it was pretty easy and kind of fun to get all of those figured out. 

Edited January 4, 2014 by mobile206