matt69olds

Anyone in readerland know what the various color power taps were used for? The clear (white) only plug into the 3 power ports protected by the gauges fuse. Black plug into port labels battery ( hot at all times) red were used for power seat, power door locks, etc protected by the 30 amp circuit breaker. Green is dash illumination protected by the dash lamp fuse. Gray was used for things powered only with the key in “run” like cruise, power trunk, ELC (electronic level control). Brown is used for lights on warming, defogger panel lamp, that leaves the blue and orange power taps. I have looked thru several service manuals, with no mention of these taps. I left American Autowire a email, after 2 days no reply.



The fuse panel I used for my car came from a mid 80 GMC truck. Looks like this

svnt442

What year and model would be a good start.

joe_padavano

Those are 1980s vintage. All models used the same or similar fuse boxes, with the same sorts of keyed connector bodies. This was done to prevent mis-connection on the assembly line. It's possible that those other colored connector bodies were used on models like Cadillacs that have additional circuits. Also, the 1980s cars have power and ground junction blocks behind the kick panels that may used these as well.

matt69olds

I figured they were for circuits or accessories that aren’t covered in the manuals I have. I have several Cadillac books, unfortunately nothing old enough to have a fuse box like what I modified for my car.

joe_padavano

It turns out that I have a 1988 Chevy Truck service manual set. These trucks use a separate convenience center that has eight different connector styles:

Lamp group and roof marker lamps
Power windows and locks
Four wheel drive and rear window defogger
Power windows (yeah, I realize that's a duplicate)
Rear window defogger and power locks
Cruise control
Rear window defogger
Dome, cargo, and group lamps

Apparently the different connector keying for similar functions has to do with how the options are grouped, not with the actual power source. I wonder if this is due to the use of a larger wire and terminal in cases were, for example, the window defogger and power locks are on the same circuit? Unfortunately that manual doesn't provide connector body colors, only functions, and it's from the start of GM's period of service manuals that only use crappy illustrations that appear to be drawn in crayon.

matt69olds

I spent about an hour googling different fuse Panels for random GM cars. I found on a Cadillac Seville the blue connector body is used for a capacitor on the radio circuit. The orange is used for rear defogger, even though on other car lines the red power tap protected by a circuit breaker is use for defogger. I assumed there would have been some standard use for the various options. Learn something new all the time


Why only some cars got the radio capacitor is another mystery.