Well I'm not exactly sure what year my OHC came out of, but it has a green display.

I am looking at John's cardomain and he has all the wires listed out along with their functions. My problem is... I have a Red/Black wire and not the blue/red wire described for the dimmer input! Did they change the wire colors? I know John's is a blue display, so is that a discrepency that I am just unaware of? Or do I have a whack OHC? I pulled it myself and got all the wires coming from it, so I don't know what's up.

 

same here man...i think that the red/blk wire is the same thing

 

I sure hope so, haha. I'd like to get it confirmed by someone who knows for sure though!

 

so would i...my control unit on my OHC is fried anyways though, so until i get a new one i won't know anyways...lol

 

Rangers have a simple variable resistance dimming module to the LB/RD.

Explorers have a lot more things with different requirements to dim and at least some years have a fancier dimming module. My 99 Ex Wiring Manual shows a dimming module with two outputs, RD/BK (DC) and LB/RD (PWM). The 99 Explorer Message Center display and the EATC display and maybe the overhead console display are wired to the PWM output.

I say maybe because there is clearly an error in the 99 book: one page shows the overhead console illumination on the LB/RD and another shows it on the RD/BK. I don't remember which color my console has but I can tell you this much - the dimmer function does not work with my Ranger dimmer. I have been meaning to get an Explorer dimmer to see if I can make it work properly.

So, the short answer is, yes, your RD/BK is for illumination. Will it work correctly? Maybe, maybe not.

 

My OHC came out of a 94 Explorer LE and had several wires colors that were not the same as Johns Tutorial. So what i did was used the pic below to match the plug wires up. Positioning of the wires in the plug harness are all the same just a few different colors.

 

Ok so I think this'll do quite nicely. I am gonna try to get to this during the week. Thanks for everyone's help.

Bob, what do you think it would take to get an explorer dimmer to work properly?