Mk3 Cavalier Owners Club | Vauxhall Cavalier Dot Com

Hi Fella,
As per my PM details for the rear clusters on the Catera are as follows: -

Wires are: -
Pin 1 = BLACK to Ground / Chassis
Pin 2 = Black / Yellow for Stop / brake lights
Pin 3 = BROWN / WHITE which appears to come from the hazard light switch, and links to the LED indicators circuit.
Pin 4 = not populated
Pin 5 = Grey / Black (left) or Grey / Red (right) for tail lights
Pin 6 = Black / White (left) or Black / Green (right) for LED Indicators.

Separate light units as follows -
Pin H = BLACK for common ground / chassis
Pin J = Grey / Green for tail lamp
Pin K = Black / White for reverse lamp

Hope this helps

And in colour to pick out the wires better

Legend. Literally.

As per PM, the next query regards where to connect the ground and what the solid brown on the existing loom is for. I'll dig the Haynes manual out later, but are we to assume that the brown/white on the Catera matches the solid brown of the existing loom?

Thanks again Rob

Hi Dan,

Exactly the opposite.

Catera BLACK connects to Omega body loom BROWN.

The Catera Brown / White connects to a triggered live supply to Switch S415 - hazard warning switch perhaps?

Now then - I am thinking out loud here...

This is wired for an American car, so.....

I seem to recall that many yank tanks used to share the functions of the tail lights with the indicators.

That is - when the ignition or lights are turned on, the tail lights would come on.
And then when the indicators were used, the tail lights would flash.

So my guess is that the brown / white will iluminate the tail LED's,
And the indicator would cancel out the voltage frome the brown / white to kill the lights intermittently to give the impression of flashing indicators.

To know 100%, I would need a schematic showing S415 (A).
I spent a few hours last night searching to no avail.

Excellent work (as ever). Thanks a million, Rob.

I'll see if I can find the wiring diagram for the switch. There must have been a Catera manual produced with schematics somewhere along the line.

The Autozone website is good. You register, add your current vehicle and voila, instant wiring diagrams.

http://www.autozone.com/

This one shows S415. Any good?

Hmm - very strange.
I registered on the site to get a message that I was already registered.
Weird ??

Anyway - after looking through schematics, it appears that S415 is merely a node where several wire join.
The wiring is fed by a supply from Flasher Module XM200.

Further browsing through the schematics shows the flasher unit with 4 wires.

Blue for Ignition Live
Black for chassis ground
Black - white for a feed out to the indicator switch
Brown - white feeding down to the rear turn signal assemblies.

After looking at a new schematic - see below,
It appears like there are TWO flasher circuits per cluster.

The brown - white is for Hazard switch output to both rear light custers
The Black - white or Black - Green wires are for turn signal switch output.

Thanks for looking Rob. An interesting find. Taking your earlier point regarding US taillight behaviour into consideration, I'm beginning to wonder whether I need to worry about the brown/white wire at all (if it is to perform an action that is redundant on European soil). If the black/green and black/white wires feed the indicators anyway (and presumably operate when the hazard light switch is activated as per non-US clusters) and the associated equipment for the brown/white wire is missing because it's not needed in Europe, then the wire could be considered irrelevant - which takes us back to the original question regarding the black wire (which we know to be ground). With that in mind, perhaps all I need to do is connect the black to the brown, match the other colours and - hey presto - instant yank spec?!

Exactly that my friend.

Catera black to Omega brown.

Catera brown white leave disconnected

All other colours should match between the Catera light cluster and Omega body loom.

Super duper! I'll be sure to post some pics as soon as I'm done Thanks again for your help, I appreciate you taking time out to look at this for me.

A quick update; I'm not wiring the lights in at the moment (I'm having enough trouble getting the boot panel and centre lights to fit), but I'm thinking of using Scotchloks to draw a feed into to the Catera light plugs. This should mean that I can retain the Euro-spec plugs, which will enable me to switch the lights back to the originals if there's a problem with them at some point.

Ewwww scotchloks, think you should solder it in personally

Scotchlocks are fine for temp repairs, but not long term. This is particularly important with something critical, that could cause an accident if it fails. There was a case many years ago where a family were wiped out due to their vehicle cutting out and as a result being hit by a lorry that was traced to a poor repair using Scotchlocks.

I would have to agree.

Scotch-locks are purely a get out of jail in an emergency type of thing.
As said by Troy - soldering and sleeving are the essentials for a proper job.

Although more involved, I would extract each pin, one at a time from the body loom connector, so that I could get heat shrink sleeving to where I plan to strip a bit of insulation, and then solder my new connector wire.

Then slide the sleeving over the joint and shrink in place.

Then refit the pin into the connector before moving onto the next wire...

Can't wait to see this mod!

Be good to see it all working.

I do like making things work / fit that people have either never tried to fit or have never succeeded previously.
It's good to prove them all wrong or simply to fit a unique and tasteful modification.

^ absolutely.

I think the key to it is being prepared to mangle perfectly good and oft-expensive parts to achieve your goal. It can be easy to say, 'oh, it doesn't fit', but the excitement is in getting it to fit regardless! What's the worst that can happen? Nobody's gonna die!

The Catera outer lights are a straight fit (wiring aside), but the inners are a totally different size and shape to the Omega equivalents (for a start, they're half the width). The only way to get them to fit is to cut the Omega boot lid, and cut the Catera panel into pieces. It's a messy job, but I offered all the bits up to the rear end of the car last night and the grin on my face said it all. It's gonna look the bollocks!

Btw, don't think that I've forgotten about the Cavaliers; I've just finished writing my introduction to the project(s) for the next issue of Retro Cars. I'm hoping to get the MV6 up and running over Xmas, and then work resumes on the Cavaliers. Watch this space (or newsstands) lol!

am i the only one who had to google catera? will look cool though once done

My mega wore catera badges, it was a task and a half to get the parts from the states. Did have a grille but even after some extensive hacking it didn't look right, so I just rescued the badges off it!

lowrider dave wrote:My mega wore catera badges, it was a task and a half to get the parts from the states. Did have a grille but even after some extensive hacking it didn't look right, so I just rescued the badges off it!

Yeah, the facelift stuff is even more of a ballache because it was only in production for a year. It's cost me a fair whack to get the stuff sent over, making me even more determined to get it all up and running lol!

It should be one hell of a car when its all done, although it could well go down in history as the slowest paced project ever

TurboDan wrote:It should be one hell of a car when its all done, although it could well go down in history as the slowest paced project ever

I'm hoping that will change by the end of the month. I've been working seven days a week, all hours for so long, but things should be settling into more of a sensible routine as soon as I've cleared my current workload. I've just kicked off the Cav projects (again) too, so I'm royally screwed unless I stick to my plan of action; both the MV6 and Turbo #1 are heading out on European road trips next year! Watch this space!

I've just looked up what a Catera was as never heard of it before, never realized Cadillac made an Omega variant!! Looks mean from the photos on Google, one is a nice plain grey colour with a small color-coded bull-bar on it Like some U.S. state police vehicles. On paper it basically sounds like an Omega, same engine, transmission etc. But has a face-lift look to it. I like