Trevor,
The wiring for the O/D is pretty simple, although the easiest thing to do is
spend just a few pennies on an O/D harness ready made for you with no dodgy
home-made connections (maybe other peoples home-made connections are better
than mine...) - Rimmers sells these, and I assume most other major parts
dealers will too.
Essentially, at the moment, there should be a live wire that goes to the
reversing light switch on the gearbox, and then another that heads off the
switch to the reversing light. The live wire to the switch, at least on a
Spit, should have a bullet connector a couple of foot from the switch - since
Midgets never had o/d (is this right?) there may not be a connector here, so
you would have to cut the wire and put one in. Then, the new harness plugs
into this live feed; the live then splits, one wire to the reversing light
switch, the other heads to the gearstick. There it connects to a wire that
heads up the gearstick to the switch on top, and down again (this wire pair is
separate for easy replacement, since it can chafe). Back down from the
gearknob switch it goes to the inhibitor switch that makes the o/d operate in
3rd and 4th only (already discussed by others), and from that switch to the
solonoid itself. There should be a separate little wire that connects the
other solonoid terminal to earth.
Very straightforward, and probably possible to do yourself. Then again, that's
what my DPO did when he converted Daffy to overdrive - for ages I couldn't
understand why I kept slipping in and out of O/D. Then I had to replace the
clutch, so I took the gearbox cover off, and I saw the dreaded mess of dodgy
solder joints and masking tape - all was clear! I picked up a properly-made
harness at the same time as the new clutch - no problems since.
Good luck, I hope it all works out right!
Richard and Daffy
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