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Just confirming the connections on my 1966 Toronado's transmission control switch. Am I understanding that the FWD terminal connects to the kickdown solenoid and the AFT terminal connects to the switch pitch solenoid? My harness was damaged in an engine fire a while back and I have to make up a new one. The connector at the switch was completely destroyed in the fire and I can't make out which colors are on the wires due to the charring. The connector at the transmission is still in good shape but I really can't make out the colors on the wires either (I have red-green colorblindness) and I want to make sure I wire up the other end correctly. The FWD wire looks green (kickdown?), the AFT wire looks brown (switch pitch?)......but I don't trust myself.
The CSM is surprisingly unclear on the connections. This picture I have attached isn't my car, just a random shot off the interwebs.
Thanks!
I have labeled these connections in the manner I suspect. Just wanted to confirm.
I looked through a number of pics I took of mine before tearing it apart, and the way you show it here and describe it is correct - the forward wire is Green, and the aft wire is Brown. I'm with you, though, in that I'm not sure which is for the kick down and which is the switch pitch.
The top photo has the pinout for the big cars. They shared many parts with the Toros. There’s every reason to expect that olds used the same pinout on the Toro switches as the big cars for the switch pitch converter those cars shared.
What goes bad in these switches are the brass contacts which can be repaired, but with some minor soldering skills. The Bakelite plastic is also often brittle after many years services. The other risk of opening the up to service them is that the pot metal the housings are made from is fairly soft. It’ll stand up to opening once, but not to many times more. If you have to lean harder on either the plastic or the metal to open it, expect the metal to be more resilient.
As to wire color, I’d hit the 1966 Chassis Service Manual for the outputs. I know that the power input wires for the big cars are Orange. May well be orang for Toros too. I recall light & dark color for the outputs to the kick down and switch pitch, but can’t recall which was which.
This project won’t take you too long and it will be interesting. If you need to replace a burned up switch, you’re looking for the “Littlefuse” fixed design with the square shape. The adjustable switch has a round shape and will very, very likely be a bolt on replacement if you can’t find a good used Littlefuse switch.
Sorry if this is stuff you already know, just another system I spent a little time understanding and posting some tips on.
If you’re doing a fire restoration, please feel free to hit me up about restoring electrical harnesses. I’ve repaired and replaced a fair few big car harnesses to correct low quality repairs by others.
GM was consistent in their use of the Packard 56 system for about 25 or 30 years until about 1980. Many of the repair parts are still available. That means we don’t have to use the junky not-correct universal fasteners, we can get back to something like the good stuff they used then. Also, with a little care and few small dremel wheels, you can remove 60 years of corrosion and dirt from good brass connectors GM used back then.
I’ve built a little kit to repair wiring harnesses. It’s on my back burner to post a write up of what to do with just a good soldering iron, blue tape and Packard 56 supplies.
Upshot is mid-60’s harnesses aren’t too hard to repair in a long-lasting robust way, but there are a few tricks. Not that I know many, but what I know, I’d be happy to share.
Thanks Chris for the info. I actually followed your instructions when I unseized my kickdown switch a while back so that was extremely helpful. I noticed, however, that the Littlefuse transmission control switch you show in your thread isn't exactly the same as the Littlefuse one on the Toronado (again, of course!). The orientation of the electrical contacts for the transmission connections are different. At a quick glance, it looks the same but if you look closer it's definitely different. I guess it takes a different style of connector. Anyway, I've done some digging and I'll show what I found below.
I found a pinout for the switch pitch in the 1969 Hydramatic troubleshooting guide (shown below). It shows the vertical pin as being the detent (or kickdown) solenoid connection and the horizontal pin as the variable stator (switch pitch). I've also looked at the TH425 section on my CSM and the photos seem to depict this as accurate I've also attached a picture of the harness which captures the colors of the wires going to the vertical and horizontal pins down at the transmission. The lighter green color wire goes to the detent connection which I can follow all the way up to the FWD connector on the transmission control switch. This appears to be different than what your switch has (the AFT connection is the detent on yours).
It's a real shame that the CSM doesn't explicitly label the connections to remove all doubt but I guess we can figure it out on our own. I guess they didn't back on that harness getting potentially damaged. See photos below. I hope this helps someone someday!
Light green wire attached to vertical pin
Pinout (according to 1969 TH400/425 troubleshooting manual).
Lighter green wire attached to FWD (non-keyed) connection.
Last edited by ourkid2000; Jun 2, 2024 at 07:26 AM.
I’ve never owned a Toro so I think about it by extension from my work with the ‘66 big cars. This is a classic case where “Toros are different”
Looks pretty similar, but functions differently. Because, after all Toros _were_ different in important ways. That model moved the ball downfield in so many ways.
