VIN 11408, getting it back on the road!

[jawn101]

With that much oil by the water pump its quite possible there is a good amount of oil in the valley too. It was much easier to hook up the hoist with the intake manifold removed.

+1, not to mention there are quite a few connections that need to be undone behind the motor that are way easier to reach with the manifold off. Vacuum, water, electrical, fuel... And the motor is probably about 4-6" shorter with the manifold off, which does help with clearances.

[Josh]

Well the intake manifold is coming off, as I will be replacing the waterpump (im 99% sure its still the original unit). I wont be surprised to find a nice oil-coolant mix in there haha.

Josh

[Jonathan]

Hey Josh,

When you get to it, take a closer look at your ballast resistor wiring and confirm it is right. Yours looks a little different than the standard resistor and normally that bottom left connection is doubled up on a pin on the right side (i.e. lower left is empty).

[Josh]

Interesting. I wouldn't really know better. I have a feeling this car will be full of lots of surprises regarding the wiring. I haven't bothered hooking up a battery yet; I want to have a thorough look over all the wiring before any voltage is applied. With that being said could I both you to take a snapshot of your firewall for reference?

[Jonathan]

Interesting. I wouldn't really know better. I have a feeling this car will be full of lots of surprises regarding the wiring. I haven't bothered hooking up a battery yet; I want to have a thorough look over all the wiring before any voltage is applied. With that being said could I both you to take a snapshot of your firewall for reference?

Haha... of course! I know this only because of experience. Mine was wired wrong originally and the car wouldn't start until I figured it out (first thing I remember posting on the forum ).

Before (note the melty dark blue one which had been replaced thinking it was the problem, before realizing it was the one on the lower left that needed to move):
IMG_2268.jpg

After:
IMG_2312.jpg

Wiring diagram:
ResistorConnections-3.jpg

[Josh]

Thanks for the pictures Jon! Ill get those wires switched around asap before I forget.

[Josh]

Went to do a compression test yesterday, and I figured I would take a look over the engine wiring again before I started turning it over. I found many melted and dry rotted wires. Some connectors are in very questionable shape as well. Looks like this harness has gone up in smoke before especially around the coil resistor area. So I decided to just remove both engine wiring harnesses to fully assess and repair them. This involved removing the intake, that was fun lol. The VOD looks like what I was expecting, but with some oil as well.
So right now I am going to attempt to fix the wiring harness and check over the harnesses in the fuse box area. One thing that worries me is the reason why the harness is melted... I might fix the harness, plug it in, and it melt itself again. Also found several mystery connections, those will have to be sorted out.

[Morpheus]

I certainly hope you don't have a hole in your block... because that is a crapload of oil in the valley.

[Mark D]

When all is said and done you may also want to consider new fuel lines. The old hoses tend to develop small cracks over time, and moving everything around out of position tends to accelerate the wear. If you start smelling fuel or notice wet spots on your fuel distributor those are the signs of trouble.

[Josh]

I certainly hope you don't have a hole in your block... because that is a crapload of oil in the valley.

Yeah I did notice that and it scared me a little. The engine has an oil leak right now, but I believe it is coming from the timing cover. Ill have to do some further investigating.

When all is said and done you may also want to consider new fuel lines. The old hoses tend to develop small cracks over time, and moving everything around out of position tends to accelerate the wear. If you start smelling fuel or notice wet spots on your fuel distributor those are the signs of trouble.

I will address the fuel lines later. I only took off the line to the csi to help maneuver it out of the way, and the banjo bolt and connection seemed fine. As for the line its hard to tell until the car is running