72 TA : New Project

[njsteve]

Victory at last!

Got the replacement harness from American Autowire this afternoon. It took more than four hours to pull the old one and put the new one in. It was not a fun time.

The junction to the firewall was a nightmare as it is behind the brake booster. You literally have to pull about six inches of the engine harness into the passenger compartment in order to disconnect it from the inside half of the dash harness. You then have to find something to pry the halves apart while hanging upside-down under the dash. Of course there is no room to tighten the main connection bolt once you get the new engine harness connected to the old dash harness. And in typical fashion, the internal retaining nut inside the main fuse box started spinning, making it just about impossible to pull the two halves together. Not a happy time. Completely shredded my hands and arms doing this.

The starter removal/reinstallation was another fun part of the process. The factory length on the 455HO starter harness section has very little extra play in it as it has to get around the front of the block and underneath the HO exhaust manifolds, unlike the regular Pontiac engines, so you have to hold the 20 pound starter up with one hand while removing/installing the wires with the other hand, while using your third hand to hold the wires in place so they don't move while tightening.

Here's the old harness after I got it removed and before sending it back to American Autowire.

[njsteve]

As we suspected, the harness in the car had regular copper wire instead of resistor wire for the positive coil lead. As you can see the black wire with the pink stripe is just regular copper wire:



The replacement harness had the correct resistor wire. It was actually labeled as resistor wire like the original one I pulled from my toasted factory harness. You could see it was a heavy silver and not copper wire.



Once I got everything reinstalled and hooked up, I started her up. She actually had the correct voltage, in the correct key positions: 9 volts when running! Finally no more frying electricals. Heck, now maybe my tach will even read the correct rpms. (I can always hope).

[img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/burnout.gif[/img]

I gotta hand it to the guys at American Autowire. I don't know many companies these days, that would honor a warranty issue six years after you buy something. My original receipt was dated November 2004 but they honored the warranty nonetheless, and overnighted the new harness, no charge. Now that's the real test of a company - standing behind their product when something like this happens, regardless of the timespan.

[img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/beers.gif[/img]

[mockingbird812]

Congrats Mac. We're gonna want to see pix of your trashed arms and hands tho!! [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/grin.gif[/img]

[njsteve]

I look like something out of the new TV series <span style="font-style: italic">The Walking Dead</span> at the moment. No a pretty sight!

[mockingbird812]

That <span style="font-style: italic">Walking Dead</span> is good. I surprised myself that I would like a zombie show so much.

[SuperNovaSS]

Thumbs up to you and American Autowire.


Jason

[njsteve]

An added bonus: The tach is now working accurately too, now that the coil voltage is correct.
At 60 mph it reads around 2,700 rpm (the website chart http://www.ringpinion.com/Calc_RPM.aspx says 2,642 rpm)

Yippy!
[img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/grin.gif[/img]

[njsteve]

Took her out for a ride today and finally made the magic 1000 mile mark on the car. So everything is run-in and still actually functioning.

Funny thing is that the a/c compressor finally stopped seeping oil and spraying it around the engine compartment. Of course that then lead me to double check that there was still freon in the system and that it didn't all leak out somewhere. Thankfully it is still holding pressure and blowing cold. So I guess it takes 1000 miles of run-in to get the compressor front seal, to seal.

[aaron]

what kind of rust remover did you use

[njsteve]

This stuff is great: www.safestrustremover.com.