Wiring question

[Michael Oritt]

After removing the CAB and carbs for rebuilding I noticed an unconnected wire and an open terminal on the electrical flasher box. The wire is purple/green and the terminal is the topmost one on the back of the box. The wire comes out of a small sub-harness along with a yellow/brown and green/yellow wire, both of which are connected to terminals on the box.

The only significant change from stock wiring is that I have electrified the rear reflector pods and use them for turn flashers instead of having the one light handling side/brake/turn functions, but I cannot see that this correlates with having an open, disconnected wire at the control box end.

The screw to the open terminal was loose, leading me to believe that the wire in question was connected to it, but since all of my flashers, side and brake lights are functional I thought I should try to find out the wire's function before reconnecting it.

 

[dklawson]

This may be too succinct an answer to be truly helpful.

In Lucas wiring,
green/purple runs from the brake light switch to the brake lights.
purple/green runs from the fuse box to the hazard flasher.

I am not familiar with any Lucas wires that are predominantly yellow with a brown stripe. However, brown/yellow is the color typically used for the field windings on cars equipped with generators. It is used on the charge warning lamp circuit on alternator equipped cars.

If this is your '54, the wire is more likely to be the former green/purple.

Wiring Colors Links:
https://www.mgexp.com/article/lucas-colours.html
and
https://www.mgb-stuff.org.uk/colourcodes.htm

 

[Michael Oritt]

Doug--

I checked today and yes the wire is green/purple as you suggest. Thanks.

 

[vette]

Hello Michael, I don't have drawings for the Healey Hundred here is some info for the early 6 cylinder cars. Admittedly the 100 might have used different colour codes at different places in the car. As seen in the picture the number one terminal is the one on the top right of the box. Or the one that is closes to the headlight. The schematic for the early 6 cyl cars shows that that wire is labeled GN which stands for Green with a Brown tracer. Many times the colours are tarnished so badly that they will look like a different colour. Clean the wire with a grease and wax remover or rub it a little with some polishing compound.

 

[Michael Oritt]

Vette--

As i said in my last post the wire is green/purple, not vv as I first reported and the terminal from which it is apparently disconnected is #5--from the brake light switch.

Notwithstanding, my brake lights work fine and frankly it is possible that at sometime in the past (meaning beyond my challenged memory) I pulled a new wire to them. In any case I will simply tape the wire off and leave well enough alone.

 

[CraigC]

Michael, based on your description, I'm guessing you not only electrified the reflectors for turn signal use, but divorced the turn signal function from the original rear lights. The easiest way to accomplish this would be to pull a new brake light wire from the brake light switch to the rear lights and moving the original stop/turn wires to the reflectors. This would make the function of the flasher relay unit's stop light circuit unnecessary, hence the reason for disconnecting the GP wire from terminal 5 of flasher unit. I'll bet you also disconnected it at the brake light switch.