Ok I was driving the Z around today, hit a hill .. all of a sudden the damned thing dies...

Takes me a while to figure out what it was (bout half an hour) ... the wiring for the starter came loose and since my engine bay is a complete rats nest... I don't know how to fix this

I know my starter is screwed but it still works fine when it catches...

Any suggestions on re-wiring the engine bay?

 

You can do what I did and just get a new enginer harness. It has the wires for everything in the engine bay. Its real easy to do. I was a bit worried when i started cuz I dont know much about electricity but it was a snap. The harness "plugs" into a unit behind the brake booster and just dort of drapes itself across the back of the motor, down through the fender and into the ECM. Just do yourself a favor and get the harness for your exact car. I took a harness from an 84 Z-28 and used it in my 84 Trans Am. I had to swap wiper motors cuz the two were different. The heater control wires were a little different too. You can get a harness like this for less than a hundred bucks. Hope this helped.

 

hrm, I don't have the ECM and crap... there anything I can get that doesn't have wiring for one of those?

no a'/c, no smog, nothing like that... I just have a lot of wires that don't go to anything... have some on both sides of the engine that just look dumb n stuff... few have actually melted, POS's... lol

any advice on just clipping the hell out of things and disconnecting the ECM wiring part?

I can't really afford a new wiring harness, since I'm probably going to get one for my dash soon...

 

Need to know more about you're car. Sound like you're running aftermarket carbs and distributer. If that's the case, I would suggest getting hold of a good wiring diagram and systematically getting rid of anything that does go to the ignition/charging system or gauges. There was another post I saw last week that had wiring diagrams from an 85 camaro service manual.

 

83 Z28
350
Pertronix HEI Vacuum Distributor
Edelbrock 1407 750 cfm carb (manual choke)

I just need to know what I can pull and what I can't... the ECM is gone, I blew it up (Literally, M500's are fun)

I can sort of trace part of the harness from the ECM but wiring on a car isn't anywhere near my strong point... I'll try to get a picture or two of the mess under my hood...

 

Check this thread out. I'm sure it will be of some help.

http://www.geocities.com/vtcamaro/Wire-Diagrams.html