Ribbon cables... what can go wrong?

[flyingdutchie]

I just reconnected the ribbon cables on my car. I just do not know if the are connected the right way. Can anything go wrong when the are connected the wrong way?

[Byker28i]

Which ones? Should be easy enough to track where the earths are on the cable for all the steering column ones. Thats what I did before I marked them all up.

[flyingdutchie]

All of them. I am in the process of restoring the cerb. So they all have been disconnected. I was suprised by the lenght of the new ones which were supplies btw.

[Oldwolf]

In my old computing days there was a stripe on one side of the ribbon cable (black or red usually) and this denoted pin 0 if you can see that on the PCB

Of course this may not be the convention that our dear Blackpool friends used

Good luck!

[flyingdutchie]

Yesterday Paul Smith (ex-tvr) was so kind to spend a couple of minutes on the phone with me. It is right. The pcb's have a "1" marked to them. What was also reassuring was that nothing happens when you connect the ribbon cables the wrong way. Even with bench testing this never went wrong. So..... I ordered a new battery and start connecting the car up.

[Juddder]

You can test for GND on pin 10 of the 10 pin connector and that will give you your reference for which way up the ribbon cables should be and pin 10 is on the outside far pin of the connector.

The other 5 pin one will be the same way up

Paul is right that it's fairly safe but in theory you can send +12V to the horn input if you connect it upside down so I would recommend checking

Full pin-outs here for reference

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

and they should be this way around with the big 10 pin connector being on the outside of the Steering Wheel ECU

[notaping]

When I replaced my ribbon cables I changed them to the colour coded flexible kind.



Not prone to the track cracking that occurs with the flat copper ribbons - they're far too rigid and don't like being twisted, bent, handled too often etc.

Also, being colour coded it's easy to take a photo for future reference when disconnecting.

And they're really, really cheap. £5 for 5

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00O9Y80AK/ref=pe_2706...

[DuncanM]

notaping said:

When I replaced my ribbon cables I changed them to the colour coded flexible kind.



Not prone to the track cracking that occurs with the flat copper ribbons - they're far too rigid and don't like being twisted, bent, handled too often etc.

Also, being colour coded it's easy to take a photo for future reference when disconnecting.

And they're really, really cheap. £5 for 5

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00O9Y80AK/ref=pe_2706...

Brilliant, just ordered some, thank you!