Shift light for 160s

[Tiddy7]

Does anyone know what shift light will work with the 3cylinder 160s and which wires to connect it to ?

or actually which one do caterham fit?

[Chris SSR400]

Caterham fit the Aces SureShift 2 https://www.aceserve.co.uk 

I'll let others with far more knowledge than I explain how it's installed.

[Tiddy7]

Yes sure shift was fitted to a lot of the older Caterhams, however I don't believe that, it is the one they fit to the 160/ 170 as they are just single light units not sequential shift lights , may be its just comes off one of the ECU  channels as you can do with most of the aftermarket programmable ECUs

The obvious aftermarket option is the Omex shift light pro, which is about £150, but i'm not sure if this will integrate to the Caterham wiring 

 

[simon_h]

From what info I have the shift light on the CT1 ecu used on the 160 should be driven from the large ecu plug on pin A2. In theory if you connect an LED to 12v and connect its ground side to this it should come on at whatever the calibrated shift light point is. That value I cant remember and this is old info from years ago so it might no longer be correct.

[Benton]

How about the DRE shift light, for a cheaper option aftermarket solution. The DRE unit claims it can be set up for any number of cylinders. Used to have one on my 420R worked well and straightforward to set up.

To “drive” it apart from the usual +ve and earth, you need to find the feed wire to the tacho (which I seem to recall (vaguely) is a black/white wire on the Duratec engine cars, obviously the 160 set up could be completely different) 

On my 420 there was a spare set of unused connectors in the wiring loom ready to use, lurking  behind the scuttle on the right hand side behind the flasher switch (presumably for those cars that opted for the factory Caterham ACES unit), which I used to connect the DRE to.  May or may not be relevant for 160 cars but well worth a look to avoid having to splice into existing wiring.

 

[Tiddy7]

Simon that sound great, ill do some checking to see if the A2 pin is a switched ground as you say as that would certainly be a cheap solution. and I expect that there may well be a wire under the scuttle which is connected to that pin 

[Jonathan Kay]

I have the 160 *wiring diagrams. They include the ECU pin-outs. 

Please send me a Private Message with your email address if you'd like a copy.

Jonathan

* And Assembly Guide and Owner's Handbook and factory notice of amendments. Ditto.

Edited January 16 by Jonathan Kay

[Golf Juliet Tango]

Or you might post them here and make them readily downloadable.

They aren't nuclear codes...

[Tiddy7]

Can anyone point me to where I can get a plug to mate with the one shown below, it’s the ace shift light plug under the dash of the 160, I’m struggling to find anything to match

[Jonathan Kay]

Possibly one of these:

or one of these:

\

 

But it might be quickest to fit a new matching pair.

Jonathan

Edited January 19 by Jonathan Kay

[Jonathan Kay]

From the wiring diagram:

 

And here's the JST catalogue.

Jonathan

 

[Benton]

Interesting you have a single connector, my “connectors” for my 420 came as 3 separate spade sockets!  I think you might find that connector isn’t specific for the Aces unit (I seem to recall seeing a picture somewhere of the Aces unit coming with just flying leads) so that connector is probably just something Caterham specified or just came with the loom.  None of which of course helps 😟

I assuming  the connector, like mine, is tucked way up near the top of the scuttle. Without removing the scuttle can you get better access to it by removing either the tacho or speedo, as I had to do?

Then  at least you might stand a fighting chance of trying to replace it with a connector of your choice, or fabricating some form of connection  if you can’t find the matching equivalent. 

[Tiddy7]

close but no cigar I'm afraid, the J.S.T standard was the obvious place to look but there is nothing similar in their catalogue , and that standard only defines the pins, everyone has a different take on the plastic bits and how they clip together. As you can see in the photo they are round pins, not flat spade type and its the odd T shape part that doesn't seem to match , maybe I need to get a photo of the other side

As you say fitting a matching pair would have been easy when I has the scuttle off but now its a pain in the ass, hence why I thought I would ask about before I went down that route

[Tiddy7]

Benton, as you say it's just a Caterham part, not specific to the ACEs unit , but I do like your suggestion of going in through the taco hole in the dash. I've only just put the car back together, following a full respray and although I did replace all the scuttle rivets with threaded inserts I still don't really want to disturb everything and run the risk of damaging the paint.

I was too keen to get it all back together so now have to suffer the inconvenience

[Tiddy7]

so from the wiring diagram we have 244 and 235 which I have confirmed to be +12v and ground but the WB207 pin is connected direct to the ECU but seems to only give a constant 2.5 Volts, I was hoping for either a switched ground or switched +ve, but may be it needs to be initiated in the ECU, Anyone have any experience of this ?

I do need to check what it does if I go up to the rev limit though