Doing a harness swap on an 88 2.8 camaro replacing my damaged one and the old block which is siezed. Anyway i have the harness hooked up(no engine yet) and i was wondering if there is a way to temporarily power the interior to make sure everything works, i tried joining my grounds with a bolt n running a cable to the negative post but i still get nothing. If there is a way to power on without the engine any tips would be great.

 

Yes, connect the two red 10 gauge wires (with the fusible links that go to the starter) to the positive side of the battery, and the negative side to the body...

 

Kinda already did that yesterday. I taped the ends of my starter wires so they wouldnt short against the frame had all my positives connected at the lil junction bolt by the battery. The small ground wire was bolted to the frame by the battery, my other grounds were bolted together n lead to the negative terminal with a jumper cable. All fuses are good, and i checked fusible links as well. After all that im still not getting any power at the fuse box. Ive checked all my fusible links as well. I even continuity checked power wires to c100, and cleaned the c100 contacts Wasnt sure if there was something im missing like do i need to join any starter wire ends or anything like that? Could the ecm be bad preventing operation? Im just kinda stuck. Ik the harness is good cause it came from a running parts cart. But i dont really wanna proceed with the engine until i make sure all the electrical components are working because it alot easier to work on them with an empty engine compartment.

 

Got it solved, guess i had to bolt the wires for the starter together, i was thinking the the junction near the battery was enough but apparently those feed something else 🙄 oh well easy mistake when u cant see the full circuit clearly.

 

Hi MadnessHero,

I'm happy to read that you got it sorted. For future reference, if you ever have a situation where electrical stuff in the interior, or the lights and wipers and such won't work, it is 100% certainly not your ECM. You ECM controls engine matters only (injectors, fuel pump, spark advance, those sorts of things) and in fact you could unplug the ECM and all of the other electrical stuff will still work

 

I figured as much but this car had an electrical fire years ago n i just worried it might have fried that n caused a dead short or something lol