Just finishing an engine swap into an '86 that had the 2.5 and manual trans from the factory, ran fine, then pulled the engine and trans for a carbureted 350 and 700R-4 that drove fine in an '82 Camaro. This morning I was wiring up a pair of aftermarket electric fans, and they ran backward. I stopped, and found my DMM, and started at the battery. 12 volts. fine. I connected the 2 cables to the battery, and the fuel pump came on, no keys in the ignition. I put the key in, turned it to accessory, pump still on. I turned it to run, pump goes off. Repeated this twice. Moved on to the ignition. Ignition hot, 12 volts to the HEI. Fine. Ignition off, 7 volts. damn. I think I'm too close to this to be objective, it's probably something obvious. I verified I had the correct cable going to the starter, all my grounds are good, and right now the battery is disconnected, and the HEI is unplugged. Any ideas? Please, I'd rather feel stupid than chase this forever.

sounds as though you have a ground hooked up wrong somewhere. maybe one of the wires at the starter or a pinched wire. wish i had more info. disonnect the ground at the battery and hook a test light in there. if there is a short it should light up. pull some wires and fuses till it goes away.

maybe something is on the starter that should be on a ground? I'll plug away at it and post pics of the connections if the troubleshooting you suggested doesn't do it. I just got the wiring diagrams, so those should help, too. Thanks for the reply.

DC or Direct Current motors will run one direction if wired one way and the opposite direction if wired the other way.

So just need to switch the wires on the fans. Hopefully there are two wires going to each fan and neither is grounded to anything. Thus you would easily be able to do this and not worry about causing a short to ground.

Were there colored wires going to the fans? A connector going to the fans?