how do i go about re-wiring the guages. i tried searching the board, and found nothing on it. I'm trying to figure out what i do about my gauges... speedo, tach, engine gauges, everything. I'm puttin gin a carb 350 where a 305 with comp. controlled carb used to be. I don't need the ECM, so i want to delete it.... but what do i do with my gauges?

 

Plug them back in to the senders ?
The gauges & ECM are unrelated in operation (any year).
The oil and temp sender wiring lead to the bulkhead connector on the drivers side firewall next to the brake booster.
Buy some new senders, put them in the 350 and plug them back up. The gauges will work fine.

 

since i have an HEI Dist, I run the tach to it, right? and the speedo is gear driven in an 82, so i dont need to worry about it, either, huh?

 

You are correct. The tach, on all years as well, reads from the coil (generally a white wire for every GM made). And yes, the speedo will operate as usual.

 

on the waterneck, there are two little plugs sticking out. i assume one is the temp sender... what could the other be?

 

temp sender is on the drivers side head, should be in the front hole... fan switch temp switch is on the pass side head.

the ones on the thermo houseing you dont need to plug back in, one is a sensor for engine coolant temp for the computer, the other im not sure...

when i did my swap, both in the 91 and the 86, i just put a normal thermo houing on there and got rid of the senders..

Edit: your going to need a manual switch or auto fan switch kit - the comptuer was responsible for controlling the fans. i tested this in my 91 firebird, when i had the sender out, to see if i needed it, i turned on the ignition and used a torch to slowly heat up the sending unit... fans never came on- so u will need a switch unless u have a/c which in that case you just turn on the a/c and the fans come on! you could also wire them to be on all the time, but thats a bit hack for me

 

Not on a q-jet application. 99% of them had a mech (belt driven/old school) fan.
'82, on an f-body, never saw the light of an elec. fan to my knowledge.

IIRC, the other fitting on the thermo housing was a temp vacuum switch for the EVAP canister. Swaping out to a new or pre-emission waterneck would be a cleaner option.

 

thanks for the help. I'll go get the new sender. anyone have a pick of it so i can put it in the right hole? (putting hair around it wouldn't help.....)

 

yeah my bad.... btw tho, converting to an electric fan can gain ya up to 8 hp on the top end

the sender is litterally supposed to be on the forward most large hol between #1 and #3 clinders... can't miss it!

 

makes sense. I'll look into converting to an electric fan... especially an IROC twin fan setup. for now, I'm just trying to assemblw all my parts into a car. thanks for the help; I'll be prepping the motor tomorrow for the install.

 

sounds like fun! good luck with it!

 

i had a q-jett with electric fans, guess im odd huh? ive also done the 350 swap into my 86 and tossed everything. i was going to run all aftermarket guages but i guess i can keep the stock guages now after reading this post. going to be fun chasing all those wires. its weird because half my dash is digital and have is mechanical...how the hell does that work?

 

Don't quote me but, as far as I remember, just the l69 305's (H.O.'s) came with elec. fans. I'm not sure but possibly the last years of the lg4's (which I think was '87) too. I'm not too big on motor option history. Not extremely common to have a q-jet and elec fan but, a small amount had them. As far as the cluster... you're on your own.. I've yet to come across a complete elec. dash in the junkyards here. There was one but, it was trashed beyond seeing anything.

As far as gauge wiring, the temp gauge is a single solid green wire that goes to the bulkhead and the oil press sender have a tab/black (or maybe just tan) wire.
Both go direct to the bulkhead fron the sender though so luckily, it's not a huge pain to trace them.