My friend has an F150, it is an 83 and has a 351W in it. It seems that someone had put a Duraspark II ignition in it, so I helped him hook it up. It runs like a champ now (after removing the computer that the previous owner some how hooked up WITH the dII box.) Any how, we tore out all the wires and completely redid the ignition, he was hoping that we could figure out his gauges, that never worked since he got the truck. So my question is, does anyone have a wiring diagram that can help us hook his gauges back up(maybe from scratch?)

There is a 4 prong plug that is unused in his truck and he thinks it has something to do with that... Anyhow, pics of a working wire setup on the inside of the engine bay would be perfect.

Thanks ahead of time. I hope we get it figured out.

 

So basically after durasparking it, he didn't have the wires that went to his oil pressure sensor, water temp sensor or etc. Can anybody please tell me where these would plug into AFTER durasparking?

 

I don't know for sure what your situation is, but on my 1981 F100 I removed the Dura-
spark and installed an MSD 6A for the ignition. I didn't have any issues with my factory
guages as they all worked normally after the conversion. The only issue I had was when
adding a factory tach to the cluster I had locate the black ground wire from the harness
and ground it and hook the MSD tach output to the green wire in the harness and the
tach worked. I would get a wiring diagram for the truck and verify all the wiring.

 

It is this plug, he has nothing plugged into it, where are the wires COMING from? I assume they come from the oil press. sensor and the water temp?

Can some one tell me which prong goes to what?

 

Be aware that the only computer controlled system on a 1983 351W would be the Duraspark-III with EEC-III ignition.

Are you sure it's an 1983 and not a 1984? As a 1983 351W with a DS-III is rare except in california.

Since you are stating that the module was somehow hooked into the computer, this is exactly how a DS-III system would be hooked up.

The factory duraspark-II engine harness plugs into a four wire connector that is already on your trucks main harness. The other connector plugs from the distributor to the DS-II module.

The Duraspark-II harness consists of the Coil wire, the tach wire, and the water and oil gauge wires. (Among the distributor wires) This harness is different in length and has an extra ground wire depending on engine.

Since the truck was already wired for DS-II/DS-III from the factory, all you really needed to do is find a DS-II harness and plug it in to the corresponding connectors, and unplug the DS-III or TFI-IV connectors. Your truck even has (or had) the correct resistor wire for the DS-II/DS-III coil.

The swap is really plug and play in respect to wiring.

Since I do not know what you did or the previous owner did, I cant say that the plug and play method would work for you anymore.

The Water and Oil sender wires are

Water: Red/White stripe
Oil: White/Red stripe

Should be located in a Round 4 wire connector on the drivers inner fender panel.

 

81-F-150-Explorer is exactly right. But I don't understand what is going on. There wasn't a truck with TFI-IV in 1983. It should have already had the Duraspark ignition to begin with.

 

Well, I assumed the P.O tried to put a DII in it ( because it had a bunch of crummy/mickey mouse wiring all through it.)

It is an 83, I am not sure if it is the rare one you were talking about (I am located in Oregon) But Now I am a bit concerned, we tore the computer out and then we put the duraspark II module in it (the blue tab) It runs fine now, better than ever, actually.
What did the computer control for these models?

So basically we have the simple DII setup with no computer, I do have that plug, but it was never plugged in before.>> Do I need the computer for the factory gauges? Am I in trouble for ripping the computer out? I thought it was used for a computer adjusting carb, an he had a different non-feedback on there, so the I didn't think the computer was doing anything.


Thanks so much for that input.

 

Btw, it had 2 duraspark boxes, on had a blue tab and one had a brown tab. The brown tab wouldn't plug into anything (and wasn't plugged into anything) so we didn't use that one.