Ok so going to be swapping from a 4 cylinder engine to a V8. It will not be emissions legal and need to know if I will need the ecm and harness for this swap as the engine will not be ecm controlled. Want to make sure my gauges and such will all still work.

Sorry if this has been asked before I was unable to find the answer using the search feature.

 

If you are going with a carb'ed V8 with HEI dist. then you do not need any ECM at all.

The ecm does not control or work your gauges or anything like that. It pretty much only controlled the spark/ign. timing and fueling.

You need the body control harness (driver side firewall), which will have your front lights, gauge wires, and most engine wires.

Your gauges are controlled by senders you install in the engine.. Wires are ran stock from gauge cluster, under hood and connects to oil pressure sender, water temp sender, - (neg) side of ign. coil.

You can fully remove and not install any ecm in the car and work perfect with a carb'ed v8

 

Perfect that is what I could not figure out. Thanks

Now for the killer question, aside from finding a donor car where would I find said harness?

 

You don't even need the harness really. You can use the stock 4 or 6 cyl car harness and maybe add or remove lenght for a few of the wires.

It's really simple to wire up a carb'ed V8. You only need a handful of engine wires.

Your gauges will have 3 wires going to engine.. Those same wires are in the 4, 6, 8 cyl harness.

Your engine needs 3 wires on alt., I think it's 4 wires on starter, 1 wire to dist. ..

The headlight, blinkers, AC, heat, etc wires are pretty much the same in all the cars.

So real easy to take a 4 or 6 cyl car, stock wiring, drop carb V8 in and wire up with stock 4, or 6 cyl harness.

If you must buy one, check out Hawks third gen parts

 

That is great new, that was the last of what I had to figure out, if I don't have to buy one then I definitely won't be. Thanks a million.

 

82-83 Engine side harness is what you need to use. The 82-83 wiper system was different than all other years and only an 82-83 Engine harness has the correct wiring for your 82 wiper system.

Also,... if the car is expected to use a 700R4 you should consider adding/installing a TCC Lock-up kit.

 

This should other than the factory tach[if you have one] it will be way off.