Re-wiring when removing ballast and how the ign switch works

[CultClassik]

I'm going through some electrical stuff and luckily my car has not been messed with much. I added HEI a while back and replaced the ballast with a jumper wire.

This works of course, but I hate having stuff like that on my car, so while I'm looking at wiring I thought I'd try to figure out the best way to re-do those wires.

There's two wires on each side of the ballast. One side connects to ign sw and coil +. The other side connects to ign sw and alt reg ign terminal.

Unless I am mistaken, the wire from the ign sw that connects to the coil + side of the ballast is only there to supply full voltage to the coil during start?

If that's the case, could you remove that wire completely? This way you'd have the two wires that were normally connected on one side of the ballast - ign sw and alt reg also connected to the coil + and nothing running to the other ign sw terminal?

Hopefully that makes sense - the other thing I'm wondering is where to look to see what terminals do what on the ignition switch (this would probably help with my question also).

Thanks in advance everybody!

Almost forgot, this is a 67 Dart.

 

[67Dart273]

NO. Leave them all connected. Here's how a Mopar switch works:

You have main battery iN

You have ACC which of course is hot in either "run" or "acc"

You have IGN1, or "ignition run" (blue) which is hot ONLY in RUN. This wire is COLD during "start" so you MUST have the bypass wire hooked up to get spark in "start."

You have YELLOW, the "start" wire which ONLY goes through the bulkhead to the starter relay

And last, you have IGN2, (BROWN) or "ignition bypass" which is hot ONLY in start. This is the wire which went to the coil + side of the ballast and is the ONLY wire supplying power to the ignition system during "crank."

===================================================================================================

Headlight switch:

This has TWO power sources

Here:

http://www.mymopar.com/index.php?pid=31

http://www.mymopar.com/downloads/1967/67DartA.jpg

http://www.mymopar.com/downloads/1967/67DartB.jpg

Look at diagram "A" near the top, center, and find the light switch

Find the "black/ tr" at top right, and follow it down the page to a SPLICE

Follow the thick wire to the left and see that it goes to the ammeter. This factory welded splice is taped up in the under--dash harness a few inches down from the black ammeter wire. These CAN fail sometimes

THIS WIRE supplies ONLY headlight power, NOT tail/ park, or dash lights

Look at the bottom right of the switch and find PINK. There are two, as this post serves as a junction to feed "other stuff" Follow the pink down and to the right, off the page, and go to diagram "B" You'll see that this PINK goes to the fuse panel. THIS FUSE supplies power for park, tail, and INTO the dash dimmer switch. This point is important, as you'll see

Back to the switch, find YELLOW at the bottom left of the switch. This is the return leg of all the courtesy/ dome lights, and is the same point electrically as your door switches. This yellow terminal becomes grounded when you twist the knob to the left for "dome" lights

Top left, TAN. THIS is a TRICK. This tan is the OUTPUT of the dash light dimmer control. Remember the dimmer control receives FUSED power along with the tail lights and park lights. However as added safety, this tan goes DIRECTLY to the fuse panel and FEED POWER to the inst. fuse, on diagram B, the far left fuse. The ORANGE coming out the bottom of the fuse feeds power to all the dimmer controlled dash lights, in the cluster, radio, console, etc

Back to the switch, YELLOW/ TR feeds out to the parking lights

LIGHT GREEN as you can see feeds to the foot operated dimmer switch, and then off to high and low beam to the headlights

BLACK feeds off to the tail lamps.

A common modification is to jumper the parking lights to the tail lights so the parking lights stay on with the headlights as the later model cars do. In fact, Ma used this very same switch, and simply left the OLD parking light terminal blank, and moved the the parking lights over with the tail lights!!

 

[BillGrissom]

I thought the same thing when I custom-wired my 65 Dart. I ASSumed that IGN1 (blu) wire is powered in both "run" and "start" positions and that IGN2 (brn) wire just bypasses the ballast in "start". I figured out the *** part when I found my car would fire only as I released the starter (when lucky). I didn't need that drama when firing up on a new cam (plus the carb needle I dropped and 180 off distributor). I should have checked with 67Dart273 (above) first.

The easiest way to clean up your wiring is to get a male-male spade terminal. That allows you to clip the 2 female terminals directly together, with no intermediate wire. You can sometimes find them in bubble packs.

 

[CultClassik]

Yeah good info, thanks guys. I'll just redo those wires with new shorter versions, do a crimped and soldered spliced junction, shrink wrap it and tuck it into some loom. I'm going to have a new cam going also, definitely don't need that kind of drama, lol.

 

[mcnoople]

Along the lines of the original question. Why couldn't you just splice ign1 and ign2 together right after the ignition switch and then snip off the rest of ign2?

 

[67Dart273]

You need to make sure you have power to the regulator which comes off there somewhere, and if the wire is in good condition, you can use the original coil + lead to feed the coil, then branch off from there to the power terminal of the HEI