Electrical problems!!! Please help.
 

OK, this car is driving me crazy.

1988 Vert, S4 TII swap using a TII harness and ECU... N/A trans and diff still.
Full S5 exterior and interior, including gauges and idiot light cluster.
It's sat for a while and I just put a new motor in. - that's when most of these problems cropped up.

Almost every wire in this car has been fucked with in some way or another, this car has the previous owner syndrome /bad/

Problems:

1: The headlights don't work. They won't pop up or turn on. If I pull the high beam lever they'll light. The parking lights work. I pulled the headlight relay and the highbeams STILL would light if I pulled the handle (I thought this was impossible?) Also, I tried jumping the wire that powers the headlights (the out from the relay) and all that happened was one foglight lit, the headlights didn't.

2: All the warning lights stay lit in the idiot light cluster. The alternator IS working though, so I have no idea what's up here.

3: Runs like crap if I floor it quickly, studders/stumbles/etc... I'm going to check the fuel pump out tomorrow but I don't think that it's the issue. It was replaced though since the last time the car was running, it has a walbro 190 in it now. Runs fine if I'm just driving around aside from needing idle and TPS adjustments. Seems to take excessive cranking to start though when cold. (like 5+ seconds)

4: I noticed while driving home tonight (with my hand holding the brights on) that sometimes the headlights dim quite a bit, like there's a voltage drop for a moment.. I'm guessing this could be a short circuit?

thanks for whatever help or advice you have, I'm at my wit's end with this car.

Just replace the harness with an unmolested one and go from there.

If you need the wiring diagrams, send me your email address.
aljdiamant@comcast.net

No alt wire in the N/A engine harness... you'll have to run that. Your alt won't be running correct 'til you resolve that

it has an S4 TII wiring harness that is unmolested aside from the injector wiring.

I disconnected the TPS and that didn't help, at all.. so I'm guessing the TPS is fine aside from needing adjustment. I'll check it out on my multimeter today.

the alternator has the big wire and the two smaller ones hooked to it. It has an S5 alternator and S5 alternator harness. It worked before the last motor died (was also a turbo motor)

but the non-turbo runs the alt power connections through the front harness, while the turbo runs it through the engine harness.

So unless you changed the front harness as well as the engine harness or you tweaked the dash harness to take the turbo's engine harness alternator connections, your alt is not connected correctly

The alternator worked fine before the last motor (which was also a turbo motor, I didn't do the TII swap) died. And it still does work fine, just now the warning lights stay lit, which didn't happen before.

So it's not a harness issue. Or if it is, it isn't because the harness isn't there, or isn't connected. At least because of me.

Where's that harness connect at under the dash?

a clear indication of either a bad alt or miss-wiring.

The alts wires run to the CPU. If the warning lights are on the white/black at the alt or at the CPU is not seeing voltage when the engine is running.

awesome.

this is exactly what I needed to know.

thanks :D