Any effect if eliminating dummy light for oil and water temp?

[Rob_85Ttype]

I'm modifying my harness lengths for my newly configured engine, and was wondering if there is any ill-effect caused by eliminating the oil pressure and water temperature circuits for the dummy lights. Will the dummy light stay on, or just not come on?

Which of the two water temp sensors in the intake triggers the dummy light, and what does the other one do?

 

[Rob_85Ttype]

Anyone???

I'm wanting to eliminate 3 wires for the oil pressure (two are factory spliced into other circuits, one will be cut back, capped and remain in the harness), and either 1 or 2 wires for the water temp, depending on which sensor the dummy light gets power from.

Just want to know if this will cause problems by not having the sensors there.

 

[TurboBuickSix]

Why are you removing them? It is possible to add gauges and retain the idiot light too,you'll notice the red light before the dead gauge first for sure.

 

[Rob_85Ttype]

Well, I am having to lengthen some of the harness leads, due to rerouting the 85 harness behind the engine, and knew I was going to install gauges, and thought I would eliminate them instead of dealing with them. You point of seeing the read light is well taken.

 

[Gary Wells]

FWIW & IMHO:
I would run a good guage and the dummy light before I would run only a good gauge. If the good gauge quits reading or reads innaccurate for any reason, you still have the idiot light which is worth more than nothing. In this case, it might be priceless.

 

[ijames]

Like the others I highly recommend you keep the lights; I was really impressed when my oil pressure dropped on my 88 Chev pickup and a little red light came on that said "check gauges". Even GM felt they needed the light to get attention. I'm not absolutely positive about the 84-85's, but on the 86-87's the temp sensor (the one with only one wire on the front of the manifold; the mulitwire one goes to the ecm and the one on top of the manifold goes to the fan relays) wire only goes to the light. Unplugging it leaves the light off. On the oil sensor there is a wire for the light (the middle one); unplugging it leaves the light off. However, there are two other wires which are in parallel with the fuel pump relay contacts. You can leave these off as well but they act as a combination relay backup (you'll get fuel if you crank long enough to build oil pressure and turn the light off even if the relay is bad) and relay contact saver (they share current so make the relay contacts last longer but if you are just using the stock relay to trigger a hot-wire relay this part doesn't matter anyway). All of these wires will be hot so if you unplug them you need to insulate the ends.