The 510 Realm

Finally found a map light and had it delivered from Japan. Have the dash apart for a tach install along with a few other things so would like to do the map light install now. Put in the knob already and the light install will be very easy. The electrical connection looks too simple though. So I just connect the switch to the light using the two male/female spade connections? How does it get power? I must be missing something.....

There was probably a ground and a power wire on the Japanese wiring harness so you'll most likely have to make up your own somehow. Run power to the light and use the switch for the ground. Always wanted to do one of these....

Check out this old post on Ratsun:
http://community.ratsun.net/topic/20120 ... map-light/

James

Do you have a late car (70-73)? The original stereo wires and cigarette lighter have power and ground, but they are switched with the ignition. If you want a constant power wire, find/use the plug over by the tach/clock. If it's never been used, it'll be under a little wrap of medium blue coloured tape. It has a constant power wire for the clock.

Just a couple of sources of power for you without hacking anything up.

Just as a side note, before the advent of the internet, many guys used another heater switch and made their own light socket for this. The switches look the same and do fit.

Byron

It's a 1971. Figured I would have to create some type of power and ground source. Will probably piggyback off what I used for the AFR gauge which used power and ground from the radio. It just looked so strange on the switch and light to not appear to have any additional connections or areas to ground and power it. Emailed the source who parts out JDM cars to see if he has the harness or maybe even the wiring diagram so I can match up as close as possible the factory wiring. Will update this post with my solution eventually.

i need to install mine this summer … thank you for the info

Byron510 wrote: ↑05 Feb 2017 07:44
Just as a side note, before the advent of the internet, many guys used another heater switch and made their own light socket for this. The switches look the same and do fit.

Byron

I've been looking into this approach for utilizing the map light portion of the heater control panel. I saw a post on ratsun , but is there another link with detailed instruction on how to connect said heater switch? My thought was, since there are three positions on the heater switch (off, low, med,high), I could use the low position for the map light above the heater controls, the med position for the dome light, the high position for a map light in the glove box. Either way, it's a cool and less expensive solution. Anyone know which wires match to the low, med, high functions? Also, anyone know where I can get my hands on a heater control switch at a reasonable price?