Finishing Up The Wiring

In the beginning of April 2011 I finally had all the new wiring harnesses as the one ordered from Full Throttle Corvette arrived. We got to work and I installed the redesigned headlight harness and my friend placed the dashboard harness in the car.

I had to cut some wires to correct length and solder some fusible links to them. Otherwise my job was just to attach all the connectors and use the hooks in the engine bay to route the harness. The dashboard harness seemed like a huge mess but was actually quite simple to install. Naturally the routing would need to adjusted when installing the interior but for now it went in the car without much pain.

After connecting everything up, it was time to test the system. We decided to do this carefully as every major wiring harness had been changed in the car since it last ran. And one was even completely redesigned by myself! We didn't connect the battery to the system but used a quite low power battery charger for the testing. This way if there were short circuits or some other problems, we would find them without melting the wires.

In the first test we left out all the fuses too and then connected the charger. This didn't cause any sparks or show any visible problems so next we added the fuses and tried again. Still no sparks! :) Then we went through the different systems. Lights seemed to work but there was something wrong with the front indicators. They blinked on the opposite side they should: left when turning right, right when turning left. We checked the system and found that the indicator wires were mixed at the firewall connector. They were correct according to Dr. Rebuilds diagrams but I guess the diagram had an error. We switched the wires and after this the indicators worked correctly. Note that this has been fixed in the wiring diagram in the previous post.

Testing the lights also confirmed that we finally got rid of the front brake lights! Before when pressing the brake pedal, both the front indicators lit up. Most likely this was caused by a splice added to the brake switch. Why? I have no idea! Perhaps it was some innovative safety equipment :)

As no problems were found, we removed the charger and added the battery. This way we could test higher amperage equipment. And we were really happy to find a lot of new working stuff: all lights, windshield wipers and washer, heater blower motor etc. Seems that it helps that the ground wires are not connected directly to the battery...

Then it was time to do the real test: start the engine. We turned the key and nothing happened! Luckily after a quick test we found that the starter solenoid wire was connected to the wrong terminal. We moved it to the correct place and the engine started right up and ran notably smoother than before.

Now we were almost ready to drive the car to my friends work garage and do what we originally intended half an year ago: weld the holes in the driver floor.