Hey guys, I’ve got a 1968 Camaro with a Painless wiring harness that came installed with the car. Starts and drives fine, I’ve spent the last few months upgrading suspension and powertrain and now that she’s running and driving well I’m fixing other things.

Currently, if the car is off, key off, the heater blower (no ac), will run if I flip the switch to on. Same with the radio (retro sound aftermarket head unit) it’s always lit up even with the key off or key out. Why?

I checked the ignition switch and it appears to be correctly wired. I have 4 wires from the loom plugged in, red to bat, brown to acc, pink to ign, purple to sol. Which matches the instructions: https://www.painlessperformance.com/Manuals/20101.pdf

What do you guys think? Bad ign switch?

 

I can not speak to your wiring harness. The problem is that Painless makes so many different ones. They have the one that should match stock and they have just generic wiring harnesses that require a lot more input by the installer.

The way it should work is there are 2 sides to the fuse box. Side one is powered all the time. This is mostly for you lights and a few other things. Then the ignition switch should power up the key on the other side of the fuse box. Back in the day people would "fix" their wiring then after that they would bring it to me because their battery kept dyeing. Most of the time I just had to switch things over to the correct side of the fuse box.

You could in theory make a budget wiring harness that did not have and on off sides. When this is done, mostly in race cars, there is a secondary switch to power the motor or anything that could put a constant draw on the battery. Now if the car has been modified with an electric fuel pump and a high powered ignition and alternator it could be that there was too much draw from all the aftermarket parts on the key on side of the fuse box. Who ever installed it had to move some of the accessories to the power all the time side of the fuse box. To do that would would want to pick items you were less likely to leave on.

 

Couldn't you just try disconnecting the brown acc. wire from the back of the switch to see what happens? If the problem goes away then likely it is the switch, if the problem persists that would indicate a miswire somewhere else.

 

I replaced the switch, everything is working perfectly now. Must have been a bad switch.