So I've hit a bit of a snag with the oil pressure sending unit. Turns out that the pigtail I got is for 1 wire/1 prong, but I need 1 wire/3 prongs. Seems rather strange to me that the sending unit would have 3 prongs, but only take a reading from one of them.

 

i had to do a double take on mine. look at it and look again, wonder what the heck, somethings missing. went so far as to look it up in the book.

 

That would be a "multi-use" oil pressure switch you have then. 3rd gens, and some other vehicles had 2 additional pass-through wires (power in, power out) that worked as a secondary power supply to the fuel pump, where as long as there was oil pressure, the pump would keep running in case there was a fuel pump relay failure. 4th gen's don't have that feature, hence only one wire just for the gauge, instead of three.

 

After fiddling for 20 minutes, I managed to get the pins out of the connectors and make one useful pigtail out of the two. Now the frustrating part is trying to splice it back into the harness. There is literally less than two inches of wire coming out of the harness that I can work with, and it's all the way to the firewall. I fought with that for almost 45 minutes tonight, without success. I'm using this kind of splice:



Getting that onto the tiny wire sticking out has been next to impossible. The couple of times I had it on there and tried pinching it down with the needlenose pliers, the wire immediately just slipped right back out. With where the wire is located, it's next to impossible for me to get both hands, a needlenose pliers, and light into that small area, while still being able to actually see what I'm doing.

 

My advice would be to get some solder, heat shrink, and another piece of wire.



Do this, extend the first wire, put heat shrink over the connection, then solder the second wire to the extension you just made and put heat shrink over that. It will be the best, most reliable connection, resistant to weather and you can yank on it pretty hard without failure

 

get your local 11 yr old in the hood to do it for ya. or maybe the old lady, small hands.

 

lol maybe I should look into that

Yeah I agree soldering would probably be better, but I don't have a soldering iron, or a source of electricity to plug in said soldering iron, or enough hands to hold the solder, the iron, and pull the harness far enough for me to reach the wire, or enough room to get all that stuff in where it needs to be. As it is now, I have to wedge one arm between the header and the traction control unit to hold the harness close enough for me to wedge my other hand between the TC unit, the cowl, and the brake booster so I can do something with the wire.

 

You're making this more difficult than it has to be.
Take note of the coloring of the wire. Trace the harness that wire goes into up higher to where it's more accessible in the engine compartment. Cut an opening in the harness wrap, find that wire, and pull it out of the harness. Now you can splice that wire with ease, then reattach it to the harness with zip strips, and tape up the cut opening.

 

New plan: abandon everything, swap in new Gen 5 LT1


I'll try what you said, hopefully that makes it easier.

 

Been there, had that man. You're not the first one who's ever had wire reach problems!