OK so I have an 86 3door that I have been doing TONS of work on, fixing up, modifying etc.. Well, so just so you guys know, wiring is my department. I came across a couple usefull tidbits if anyone is interested out there.

 

First off, as we all know, when you switch over to a digidash and start cutting and soldering wires... one thing that you have to deal with is the fuel level sender. The old school analog ones use a 2 wire, and the digidash ones use a 3 wire. I decided to take on this task and see what is involved in adding this circuit. Upon replacing the fuel level sender first, I noticed that the car actually came wired with 3 wires coming from the connector. So where does this 3rd green/yel wire get eliminated?

 

 

up here!! right after it goes thru the body harness/underdash connector, the wire changes to a black ground wire on the other side and therefore acts as the 2 wire circuit. Well all I had to do was clip the wire and add my own that only ran thru the underside of the dash over to the digital cluster. Its hard to see in the picture cause my camera doesnt focus very well, but if your looking at the female end as it sits in its plastic bracket (in the background) its the top left pin of the black connector.

 

 

OK!! now all I need to do is figure out the outside temperature thing and we're doin good...

 

 

 

SECOND wiring tidbit:

 

OK, so I have a light on my digidash (or even the analog guage cluster) for "rear tailgate open" or "rear hatch" or whatever... On my wiring harness under the dash it was pretty easy to find... Its a red/green wire if I recall (*note, dont confuse it with the several backlighting wires which are the same color) I attached the wire and thought nothing of it till I discovered that it wasnt working. . It turns out that on the 3 doors (and I think the sedans too) they have the wire built in the dash harness, cause its universal as far as ea82 cars go (excepting xts), however.. it gets eliminated at that same body connector!! they have the wire go in, but connects to nothing going out. This got me really confused because I know my car came equipped with the switch..

 

 

SO... it turns out that this wire doesnt do anything cool, except run to a connector only 1 foot away, for I suspect... some kind of interior light (I dont actually know yet because my car came missing the rear cover panel). So to make this grounding circuit usefull, I ran a wire thru the body up to that same black connector.

 

Heres a picture on on the dash end of the wire going into the connector:

 

Here is the female connector WITHOUT the pin as it is from the factory:

 

 

And here is after I added the extra pin:

 

 

YAY!!! ok so now if my rear hatch is open, the dash tells me!! why subaru didnt do this from the factory? I DONT KNOW!

 

*note: one thing you might notice by the way is that the pin for the rear hatch switch is the one DIRECTLY below the one for the fuel sender wire that I just modified as stated above...

 

OK people! so there you have it. Whether that stuff is usefull to you or not I dont know..

 

-Mike

Edited July 16, 200916 yr by RenaissanceMan

Looks great but I think you typoed when you said 83.

 

There were no EA82s in 83 in the US.

 

Must be a later model? 85+

Yeah that was a typo, sorry bout that.. fixed it.. (its an 86)

 

Looks great but I think you typoed when you said 83.

 

There were no EA82s in 83 in the US.

 

Must be a later model? 85+

thank you for documenting this with the pics