Shift Light Placement

[lake_harley]

I had installed a simple ProForm shift light on my FED but it seems it's "flickery" and really not helpful.

To go to a better shift light I bought an AutoMeter 5350 Level 3 unit with more features, including a "launch" light, playback and recall.

I had the old shift light mounted on a bracket attached to a threaded boss on the intake manifold and the shift light was along side the GM HEI distributor. Originally, not wanting to cut the wires in case it needed to be moved I coiled up the wires and zip-tied them. Thinking the coiled wires might be a source of the flickering light I finally shortened the wires to get rid of any possible "inductance" (proper electrical term??) current between wires when wrapped up. That didn't help.

That's when I got the AutoMeter light and called factory support to ask about coiling the excess wires, telling him it was mounted right next to the HEI distributor. He said at that location it would not function properly because of electrical "noise" from the HEI.

Since cockpit space is already cramped I'm open to suggestions on where I could mount the light, maybe first trying the old one it at a different location. I don't really want to mount it on the cowl because that would require holes in my beautiful cowl, and I'd need to wire in a quick disconnect to be able to remove the cowl and put it off to the side of the car. Thought about fabricating a bracket off the front of the intake, near the water outlet (SBC), to see if that might get the light far enough away from the distributor electrical "noise".

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks, in advance!

Lynn

[wideopen231]

Depends on how well can see in semi hidden are. Under cowl inside would work for me. Do not need direct site to get attention for me. Did not see what you have for induction. If have scoop then mount it there, a direct view. Same with hat Heck right above steering wheel will work. I do not run one with this car on my TA/D I had it on top of dash ,in yor face. Dang driver bad about hanging it out too long.

[lake_harley]

Thanks for the quick reply. There would be a spot to tuck it in under the cowl, right at the base of the windscreen and I thought it would be visible enough in peripheral vision to be useful. One problem with that is that there are 3 buttons on the light to program different functions and it would be all but impossible to get to them in such a tight spot.

Induction is just a single 4 Bbl carb and a fiberglass air scoop so I'm thinking off to the left and just in front of the carb might be another location. The shift light would be just inboard and slightly above the left valve cover. In that location the light itself would be about 16" or so from the distributor. Maybe that's enough separation to get away from the electrical "noise"? That might be a possible location short of drilling into my cowl and you can probably tell that is about the last thing I would want to do.....it's so pretty as it is. But then again function must trump form I suppose.

Lynn

[lake_harley]

Just to follow up, here's what I did. Perhaps somehow this will help someone else down the line who is having a similar issue with a flickering shift light.

I re-positioned the light to mount on a bracket bolted to the intake and the light is now at the front upper corner of the left valve cover. Just lengthened the wires enough to reach back to the previous hook up points at the distributor. Power to the light is "ON" with the ignition. Pulses come from the "Dist" terminal on the HEI distributor cap. Since I had cut the wires short when it was mounted next to the distributor I added wire length and connected the wires with "bullet" connectors near the light so it could be removed easily.

Did a test fire of the engine and set the light setting down to 3,000, revved the engine briefly and the light came on nice and solid with no flickering. I do like the launch, recall and playback features of the AutoMeter light I bought and will probably switch to it later after a bit of real-world testing at the track. Thought I'd do a proof-of-concept mounting with the less expensive ProForm light since I had already shortened the wires.

Tomorrow and Saturday we'll be running the car at the Bootheel Fuel and Gas nostalgia drags at Sikeston, MO. For us it will be another test-n-tune opportunity but we might get brave and pick out a similar ET car to challenge to a grudge match. As always, if there are no puddles of oil or transmission fluid under the car, and it can still be rolled on the trailer when it's over, I'll be happy! It's going to be a hot couple days at 95-ish degrees so cool-down time between runs will be a bit longer I'm sure.

I also bought a digital tire pressure gauge. Glad I did. My dial type analog gauge from my circle-track racing days was way off. After I set the pressure evenly in the slicks, using the digital gauge, the roll-out was within 1/8" side-to-side. I think that's about as good as I can expect. 

Lynn

[tcoupekyle]

Very cool!
Honestly I’m not a great driver so I just wired in a switch so it shifts itself. I also mounted my shift light on the blower case. I’m just not smart enough to actually look at it.