It was me and here is the original text...
Here is what I would do.
First of all, I will assume you want to merely test what the dash lights
look like when the rheostat is bypassed rather than permanently
bypassing it for now. If this is not correct then my suggestion will
still work without having to really change any wiring (ie. no soldering,
cutting, splicing etc.).
The rheostat has 4 male spade lug connectors sticking out of the flat
edge. This is where the wires _in_ from the power and the wires _out_ to
the dash lights connect. These connectors are really only two connectors
inside the unit. The two closest to each other are one common circuit.
(ie. the two left-most ones are the same circuit [let's say the "in"
circuit] and the two right-most ones are the other [let's say the "out"
circuit. This allows up to two leads to be connected to any one of the
circuits. On mine (like yours), the "in" lead was only one wire - red -
and the "out" lead had two wires - red/white).
So the best way to bypass the internals of the rheostat is to connect
all your leads to either the "in" or the "out" circuit. This will of
course make the dimming function cease to work since the current will no
longer be passing through the internals of the rheostat. We will merely
be using the rheostat as a convenient device to connect three wires (the
one red and two red/white ones).
The only problem (on my car, a 76, so I might have one extra wire than
yours) is that you have three wires which you want to connect to only
two lugs (the wires have female spade lug connectors at the ends). So
the solution is to go to an electronics store (Radio Shack is fine) and
obtain a spade lug connector with one female and two male ends (let's
call this the "splitter"). This way you can connect the splitter to the
rheostat and presto, you now can connect three wires into two lugs.
If you don't have three wires but only two, you can omit the splitter
part of this. Just make sure you use two adjacent connectors on the
rheostat and that one of them is the outermost one (doesn't matter which
side). If we look at the rheostat representation below and assume that
the connectors are laid out like so:
| | | |
1 2 3 4
you should use either 1 & 2 or 3 & 4 but not 2 & 3. (Internally in the
rheostat, 1 & 2 are directly connected and 3 & 4 are directly connected.
The 1/2 circuit then passes through the "rheostat" function stuff and
comes out at the 3/4 circuit.)
Hope this helps. Any other questions, let me know and I will try
answering them. Good luck,
Peter Zaborski
76 TR6 (CF58310 UO)
Calgary AB Canada
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Moag [SMTP:moag@ix.netcom.com]
> Sent: Monday, January 26, 1998 11:59 PM
> To: Triumphs Mailing List (E-mail)
> Subject: Bypassing Dash Light Rheostat
>
> A short time back somebody posted a nice description of how to bypass
> the
> rheostat that controls the level of dimness in the dash lighting. Of
> course, now that I want to look into doing that on my Spit, the
> message has
> vanished mysteriously from my collection. Would you mind re-posting
> it?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dave Moag
> 77 Spitfire
> 62 TR3B
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