Today's spare wire question is about the wire that I have under my battery. I did a pretty good job of marking almost all the wires when I took the engine out of the car. I didn't mark this one. This car did have AC when I took it apart. What is this wire for?...yes I have looked at the schematic.

I have one too on my '75...

I bet that's for the oil temperature sender, AKA, "taco plate". Do you have an oil temp gauge either in a console or combo gauge? If not, I think it's for the taco sender. On cars equipped with oil temp gauge, a green wire goes from the "telethermometer" sensor (in the oil sump/taco) across the engine mount bar then up through the same hole with grommet that the throttle cable goes through the engine tin. It's then connected to the connector you show in the pix. I think that connector is "T1a" in track 54 of the following electrical schematic.

http://www.pelicanparts.com/914/parts/Elec...lectric_74D.jpg

It should be a green with black stripe for the oil temp. sender to the gauge.

I have the beginner level 914 without the fancy temperature gauge. Was the same wiring harness used for the "fast" (2.0) version and the 1.7? If that's the case, my wire would just have to hang out wishing it's in a car pumping out 100 horsepower instead of 80.

You don't indicate what year your car is but I think in '73 at least (1.7 and 2.0) the harness is the same for both engines. It would be easy to add this:
Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

I have a '73 1.7. That would be super easy to add, so I'm going to put this on my future enhancements list. Thanks for the great pictures!

Wire is indeed for taco plate(aka oil temp sender). All the 73-up main body harnesses had them in it.

Zach

I got a chuckle out of this thread. You are asking a question about 1 wire (to be honest, I always wondered what it was for too). Today, Nadine and I started the process of ripping out any unnecessary wire in Papa Smurf. We had so many wires that were not connected to anything, Papa probably lost 10 lbs! And those were just the wires that were not hooked to anything. Tomorrow, we tackle all the wires that are not being used but run through the harnesses....

fun fun!

yup, the stripe is prolly real vague

mike