Mystery part under dash

[Wobbles1971]

Curious if anyone knows the use of this part.

It was mounted under the dash although it was not hooked up to anything. Only thing readable on the unit is Pentatech Inc. Car had original radio installed and nothing out of the ordinary. Red/Yellow/black ground, makes me think radio attachment of some sort, but iono. Dash lights dont work in car, maybe this was some type of relay or something at one time to bypass the dash light rheostat switch? Just curious, maybe someone has seen one before, looks pretty old school. Thanks.

[nwcubsman]

I think that Pentatech used to make alarms. But I was never an installer.

[JLPurcell]

CIA Tracking device? or could be FBI.

[zbane]

Throw it away and it'll be a Pentagone.

[geezer]

This is a wild guess, but there was a company by that name that made car alarms. Drive it like you stole it!! :bandit:

[troubledz]

There watching you.. get rid of it...

[EScanlon]

Old style Lights-On alarm?

[Wobbles1971]

Any idea of what the basic wiring set up was for these old "kill switch's". Now Im starting to think thats what it was, thanks to the heads up on this brand making them. Only thing out of the ordinarry that I could see was a wire coming off the ignition switch. Guess it could of been wired from that ignition wire to the rheostat and acting as a simple relay. Ill get under there next weekend and do some testing, but that sure would be nice to eliminate my "no dash" light problem and put to rest what this lil bugger was doing up under there.

[geezer]

Crack it open and lets have a look inside.

[Wobbles1971]

[geezer]

A bit tough to decifer from the picture, but I'll venture a guess. It could be a normally closed relay which could be used to flash the lights and pulse the horn relay. The black wire with the aligator clip was probably used to arm it. Try feeding it a fused power supply and also, do a continuity test. It looks to be a pretty simple device. Any one else?

[geezer]

I can elaborate some, if you want to test out my theory. With your 12V feed (fused), connect to the red wire, connect the yellow to a test light and ground the test light. The light should turn on (and I suspect pulsate). You can instead, just check for continuity from the yellow & red wire. Now ground the black wire and the light should turn off. The black wire is supplying a ground to the control side of the relay which in turn when connected will not allow continuity to the yellow wire. The yellow wire then can be used to control the 12V control side of another relay, or supply 12V to anything when the aligator clip is removed. This device probable has another feature built in to create a 12V pulse. Have fun!