I am replacing the original fuse board on my 1988 3.2. I had noted years ago that it appears two wires were doubled up on one pin of the W connector, the well known one that has the burnt connector outcome. Any idea why someone previous did this, probably the dealer who serviced it back in the day? Since everything has worked properly for many years, it was in my if it aint broke leave it alone category of tasks. But now that I am putting in a beautiful new GT Board, should I separate and have each on its own pin? I presume one of the wires would be pinned into the open space below the spot they are doubled up. Does it make a difference which wire I should put into the new spot? Maybe I am am best just to leave it all alone, and do a simple swap of the new Board, but the perfectionist me needs to cause the practical me the usual conundrum of which way to go! Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
The wires doubled up are brown, and brown with black. My car is a CH88, so the wiring diagrams available make it hard to be sure of each circuit and I can see no brown with black wires in the diagrams I have. It is definitely part of the factory loom.
One of the pins does have 2 wires. Mine (83) are both the same brown as yours, but the wiring diagram shows them as “P” beige. One is thicker at 2.5, other is 0.8. Your thinner wire looks hand striped.
Interesting, thank you. The pins do not really look like they are sized to properly crimp and grip two wires, so I am surprised this is potentially the way they were actually installed.
Those pins aren’t much good at gripping anything. They tend to form a poor high resistance connection that heats up, looses even more tension and burn the connector and damage the board. Replacing the pins for the four high constant amp circuits (HVAC, Fuel pump, rad fan, ac condensor fan) with properly sized quality spade connectors with pigtails through the white clips can be helpful.
The weakest point on the OEM boards is just those connectors that are to small for the maximum current that can go true them. Once they did heat up, loose there spring force and from then on all things will go bad. An other solution is using bigger connectors....
The fuse board swap did not take that long, I cleaned all the connectors with Deoxit, and generally made sure all was in order. The pins were in good condition, I had some spares but did not see a need to replace any. I did replace the W connector with a new 3D printed one, that was more robust than the factory connector, but a bit tight to fit compared to the original. The G.T. Car Parts board looks very well designed. I ordered mine using one of their cores, which was in fine shape except the metal inserts the fuse board cover bolts attach to had been removed. Odd to have left these out. I fabricated a plastic insert from a vacuum tube cap that the cover bolt seems to affix into well enough. But I would have preferred the metal inserts to have been left in place. I have contacted GT about this, not sure they can do anything, but maybe they have the correct metal inserts that I can press in at a later date. Removing them from my original did not look possible without damaging what is now a usable rebuildable core so I let them be. The car started up and everything is working as it is supposed to. The old board was showing its age, and was obviously extremely fragile, it would no doubt delaminate and crack if I tried to remove the board itself from its enclosure frame. I am surprised it has actually functioned properly for so long. A 36 year service life for a circuit board in a high heat environment is pretty reasonable. I would suggest that if people still have original boards, they are on borrowed time at this age. Here are pics of the old board. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
