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Do you have the assembly instruction manual (AIM). The AIM shows the connections for the over rides and the hose routing. The end vacuum switches are the headlight door and wiper door over rides. One of your switches looks like it had a broken stem. Try the other and see if either the headlight doors or the wiper door open.
The center electrical switch is the wiper over ride and will stop the wipers on the windshield to allow for blade changes.
The wires screwed to the bracket are Bubba.
Your owners manual explains these and what they do.
I am guessing that your car is a 1968 due to this switch only has one terminal on it.
Those wires are for sure not factory where they are screwed to the metal bracket. But that does not matter as much as that at least one of these wires MUST be a GROUND wire.
And by looking at your photo. I see one eyelet terminal that has had the wire broken off if it.
The BROWN wire with the WHITE stripe on it plugs into the switch.
AS for the vacuum hoses. Obtain a vacuum hose routing diagram and look at it. You can easily Google it and it will show up somewhere on the internet. I am sure Willcox has it on their site also.
Thanks for the replies. Yes my car is a 68. The wires connected to the switch are grounded to a bulb socket under the shifter plate from what I recall. I’m not sure if it was for the radio or something possibly?
There is is also a yellow wire under the console that’s grounded to one of the mounting screws.
Ive ordered the aim just waiting for it to show up.
Since you obviously have some bubba wiring, make certain you have the ground wire going to a good ground that is part of the car metal frame. There are places on the console that have metal, but they are not attached to anything that is grounded to the frame.
I’m not sure what that yellow wire is for but I was thinking of grounding it to that screw behind the panel trim. If it’s actually a wire that’s supposed to be there.
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I dont think there is metal there since the 68 floor is fiberglass. You need to confirm the grounds you are connecting to with a meter. I used the upper dash and windshield frame on my 68
Looks like they are using the bracket to hold the factory radio support as a point to allow more ground wires to be attached. Kinda like a junction block would be.
Either way...it is not factory correct but can serve a purpose as a ground connection point if a person chooses to do so....as long as the actual ground wire coming off a good ground point on the cars chassis to this point is a large enough gauge to support all of the other grounds being drawn from it.
Once again, it looks like your car could be mine's twin... Having the AIM and wiring diagrams are good, but if yours has as much wiring creativity as it appears it may (as mine did), your only hope is to trace every wire. What doesn't work?
Just fyi, I spent a couple weeks trying to trace the wires on mine (roughly 1/3 coming out of the firewall connect were just cut off, all were painted black...). Eventually, I gave up and spent the money for all new wiring throughout the car. The problem I kept running into is that nothing worked and I couldn't tell if it was:
a) the switch or sender
b) the component or gauge
c) the wiring between them
With the wiring so fubar'ed, I realized I wasn't getting anywhere until I eliminated that question.
Hope yours isn't so painful...
Keep in mind that I do this for a living...so....all of you DIYers out there that want to spend the time on your wiring harnesses that have been hacked and sliced and diced up. I have no problem with guy who wants to spend hours and hours unwrapping harness and putting zip ties where certain pig tails of wiring come out of the main harness and repair everything...then wrap it all back up in the non stick wire harness tape.
Because some times people are willing to spend their time instead of money on a new harness if it can be repaired correctly. I guess it all boils down to how that person values their time and what they want to get out of it.
I know I can fix wiring harnesses...but sometimes it is a losing battle and costs more to repair than it does to replace an entire harness.....just saying.
Thanks again for all the clarification. Looks like tomorrow will be a day of making note of wiring anomalies and then once my AIM and diagrams get here I can get to work. Right now the only things not working are the reverse lights and the vacuum for the headlights.
I think all the gauges work, minus the clock. The tach doesn't work either but thats something that can be fixed with the correct distributor with tach drive.
tomorrow I will remove the driver side dash and the shifter console and see how good or bad it all is.
Wiring question
