[T3] a wiring question

[Bobsnotch at aol.com]

In a message dated 7/24/2012 10:22:31 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
djsanderson at telus.net writes:

Hi  Folks

I have question about the wiring around the ignition switch in  my  
notch project. The question involves a couple of wires and I  can't  
figure out what they do. My steering column is from a '65 and  I am  
blending the wiring harness, or at least parts of it, from a  '71  
vintage.

If you look at the wiring diagram for a '63 type  3, like the one shown  
on Dave's site  (http://www.hallvw.clara.net/wire64n.htm) the wiring  
around the  column is quite straight forward. Power comes to the column  
and  ignition switch from the battery to the light switch and the fuse   
block. The black wire takes power to the whole ignition and running   
side through the fuse block. It's very simple and clean.

But if you  look at a later vintage, 
(http://www.hallvw.clara.net/wire66tl.htm 
),  you'll see an important difference. Power comes to the ignition   
switch from the battery via the headlight and fuse block as the   
earlier model and the black wire takes power, with ignition on, to  the  
fuse and the engine etc. But there are two grey wires that  connect to  
each other via a fuse, the 4th from the left. They don't  appear to do  
anything. I'm curious about  what they do or  whether they were put in  
for some other reason. I've just installed  the steering column and am  
loath to take it to chase wires. Can  someone tell me what purpose they  
serve?

Oh, and a second  question, perhaps a related one, the side marker  
lights get their  power from the ignition. I assume that they are meant  
to be running  lights that are on all the time the ignition is on. Is  
this correct?  They do not appear to be tied into any of the light  
circuits.  Perhaps the grey wires are a way to bring power to these   
lights?

Thanks in advance.
 
I'll try and take a stab at this. I believe the 2 gray wires are for the  
side marker lights. They are supposed to "light up" when you have the turn  
signal lever in position (R or L) with the key off. This was a form of early  
parking light used in Europe. Most of us that have them though, convert 
them to  side mounted turn signals.It's fairly easy to do (the conversion), 
since the  turn signal switch has extra contacts built in just for the side 
markers (in the  case of my T-34, I just added a single double ended spade 
jumper to the  flasher relay). In Canada, VW used a "blanking plate" to fill the 
hole in  (usually it had TS on it, or in the case of the T-34, it had a 
Karmann script on  it).
 
Since you're using the 71 harness, you'll probably have to add a couple of  
wires to the set up, mainly for the ignition switch side, due to 71's  
powering the ignition switch first, rather than the headlight switch (on earlier 
 models). I believe the colors are fairly straight forward and similar 
though.  Using the 68 to 70 wiring diagram would probably help quite a bit here, 
to help  you with the 2 wiring harnesses and switch connections (since it 
uses the 4 ways  that you want to keep from the 71 set up), but using the 65 
(61-67)  style ignition switch. I hope this helps.
 
Bob 65 Notch  S with sunroof and IRS (Krusty)
64 T-34 Ghia  (Wolfie)
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