Wiring diagram "gear shift lights"

[V8Cowboy]

Hi,

just had a look at the wiring diagramm of a '70 challenger and stumbled over the term "gear shift light". What's that?

Some kind of  lighting of the manual shifter? A backlight of the automatic P-R-N-D...? A light that indicates when to shift?

As far as I understand english I probably would assume it to be the latter...

[brads70]

"A backlight of the automatic P-R-N-D"  this is correct on a console car. 

[dodj]

Manual cars had a reverse light installed on the dash. 

[V8Cowboy]

Are you sure on that? Quite some wires for a simple illumination. What I mean is on the same connector as the ignition switch.

[swede-cuda]

Are you sure on that? Quite some wires for a simple illumination. What I mean is on the same connector as the ignition switch.

                Aha.its just 1 wire,the orange. the connector my 4speed was born with dont have the orange. but the nos replacement ign,switch has it... 

[burdar]

One single orange wire.  It plugs into the orange molded rubber connecter under the dash.  It runs across the floor(held to the floor with a piece of tape) and goes to the auto shifter. Also, the IGN switch does not power the orange wire.  The orange wire is powered by the headlight switch.  Two orange wires are crimped together in the connecter that attaches to the IGN switch.  Replacement IGN switches have a black ground wire in the slot that connects to the orange wires.  That ground wire needs to be removed from the connector before installation.

The orange three slot molded connector can be seen in far right side of this picture.  The shift light, dash lights and something else plug into it.

[V8Cowboy]

Thank you, finally I think I got the point

Found a site with some nice and really helpful (at least for me) PDFs about Chrysler part manuals:
http://www.jholst.net/70-parts-manual/

Looking at the steering column with the background information I got from you I found this picture. Now I think it's clear for me. The orange wire will probably be the backlight for the column shift indicator. Bulb and lamp are marked in the circle I misinterpreted the caption on the wiring diagram and thought it's some kind of complicated circuit.

Thanks for the clarification!