Howdy from Colorado. I thought I'd taken copious notes but now I can't get my wife's 1/2 ton station wagon to fire up. It's a dodge, 1963 town wagon with the 225 slant six and 4 speed manual.
We were having ignition switch issues and I couldn't find a NOS stock 5 pole/terminal one anywhere so I picked up a Ron Francis 4 terminal/pole replacement. Contacts are marked as IGN(starter), GROUND, BATTERY FEED and ACCESSORIES.
I added or replaced the starter solenoid with the ford unit, voltage regulator was the original from '63, gone and added an MSD 6AL and matching coil and chopped out the ballast resistor. I've got the MSD wired for points as I haven't got the new distributor in yet (I'm not going to dick around with that until I get this figured out).
Anyone know of a library of schematics or wiring diagrams that I could browse.? Here's her truck, yep ex forest service.
In reply to Cris Baur :
If I were guessing, I'd think it'd be wired much like one of the same year light trucks... A quick search turned up http://www.sweptline.com/tech/electric.html
That terminal list sounds odd; is it for use with a separate starter button? Or does it not really have a separate ACC position, and only runs the accessories with the ignition on RUN? The only 4-terminal Ron Francis switch I peeked at had no ground, but had separate ignition and starter terminals...
There's something not right with the labels on that ignition switch. I can't think of any reason why there would be a ground terminal.
Nothing to add but that's a cool truck!
In '63 we could hot wire a truck in 45 seconds. 
Most of us old timers could drive it without the switch and just a paperclip.
I couldn't tell if you have already gotten the starter to spin. I agree with others, the labeling on that switch doesn't compute. There are so many Mopar parts supply houses for 60's stuff, I'd get the correct switch.
Takes three wires to run it: Connect 1. Power to 2. ignition, then touch 3. starter to those two.
Is this close to what you are looking for? This is from an old Steve Smith race car fab and prep book from 1977. I have used this several times on dirt track cars.
In reply to drock25too :
Nice simple diagrams. I will be copying them!
To Cris... Fan Flippin' Tastic wagon!!!
03Panther said:
In reply to drock25too :
Nice simple diagrams. I will be copying them!
To Cris... Fan Flippin' Tastic wagon!!!
That was probably the most useful thing in that book. Thats why I kept it all these years.
Thanks for the 1/2 ton wagon love & the awesome diagrams too. I was going from memory on the ignition (& I guess I don't have any memory left at this point!)...
Without climbing onto the trailer to get into the truck (we're kind of pre-evacuating because of the fire that keeps getting closer) I'd like to give it another shot if I can.
Ign, Starter, Ground, Bat. Feed & Acc. The original switch had IGN I & IGN II because of the ballast resistor dealio.
I get it that the switch would ground against the metal dash but with all the ground troubles that come with 50+ year old vehicles I hooked it up to be uber cautious.
That basically looks (I think) like what I used when I rewired our British wagon, the Lotus twincam powered Husky, which I posted under projects here several years ago.
More backstory, when I first got this townie, I thought 'done' hooking the battery back up instantly had the starter engaging, make sure it's in neutral folks, glad I did. I suck at trouble shooting and it's just me so it gets hard trying to get to root cause, need a couple more hands and eyes at times. So I started yanking stuff out willy-nilly and no joy since. Going to print off the diagrams find the crayons and add the MSD wiring and go from there.
There is a lot of support for the A-body thru E-body stuff, don't know which one would be closest to the trucks. Trivia, no fuse box on a '63 Town Wagon. Thing's trippy for sure. We found it on an island outside of Seattle via Craigslist a few years ago.
Cheers,
Cris
The ignition switch should not be grounded at all, ever. Power in, and various loads out only. Figure out which terminal does which with a multi meter and re-label them please.
In reply to Cris Baur :
First off, stay safe! Hope the fires don't get any closer. I'm in Oregon, and while we didn't have anything on fire in Portland proper, we had a run where all of us in populated areas got enough smoke to drive home how much of the state was on fire. My cousin's in Boulder and the pictures I've seen have that same sense of... I keep coming back to Mordor.
I'm having a little trouble getting a clear bead on what order things are happening in; is this the switch that was in it when you hooked up the power and it ran the starter?
I'm thinking when things are safe, you should pull that switch out and take a multimeter to it to determine what's getting power when. With ground used up, that's only three terminals, and I don't think that's enough to run your truck, because you need (ignoring ground for now):
- Positive in (battery feed)
- hot when in "run" or "acc" (accessories)
- hot when in "run" and "start" (ignition)
- hot when in "start" (momentary for starter)
The only way I can see your switch working with those labels is if ACCESSORIES is hot for both ACC and RUN, and that you don't mind the ignition stays on when in ACC. And given that it spun the starter up when you hooked up the battery, I'm wondering whether it even has a momentary position for the starter? The "(IGN)starter" label is weird, because Ignition and Start cannot be the same terminal; it has to be one or the other; if it stays hot, it's IGN. If it's momentary, it's START.
