Hey TGO,

I have a Canadian 85' Firebird carb'd and I am swapping in a 350 sbc vortec. However, like an amateur, I didn't properly tag all of my wires upon removal of the original 305 (dummy move I know!). None of my searches tell me if the Canadian wiring diagrams are different from American. Does anyone know if they are and if so, where can I find Canadian wiring diagrams??

I found some diagrams for 85' 5.0 carb and printed them out pretty easily but I am relying on my wife to tell me the colours of the wires because I am colour blind, which is another reason why wiring is frustrating me

Some of the colours don't match up which is why I am asking you guys. Although I fear there has been some previous owner hack job wiring!

Thanks in advance

 

If you do find a Canadian wiring diagram, I need to know the factory way of wiring the TCC (torque converter clutch) without all of the emissions crap. Canadian cars did not have all the emissions garbage that the American cars do. I'm in Connecticut and my 84 TransAm is over 25 years old, so it is now exempt from emissions testing. So all that junk is getting removed and I will be using a manual Quadrajet carb.

 

Something else to consider here is ; In the 32 years since your car was made some of the wire colors may have faded and may not look right compared to the wiring diagram's description . Red can fade to a darkish brown , for example . A way around this can be to carefully open the harness a bit further back and see if the colors outside the harness match the colors inside the harness where the wires have been enclosed and protected all these years .

 

I just finished putting in a Painless TPI harness in my car which is Canadian and was spectacularly hacked up. I'd say 90-95% of the wiring is the same on the Cdn cars. Not being completely comfortable with wiring, I found the biggest thing is GM who just changed wire colours but it wasn't recorded on the various diagrams.

And what OrangeBird said is bang on, peeling back the harness you'll find black becomes purple/white and dark brown becomes red, to name a few.