I'm new to this forum and this is my first Camaro. I'm 20 yrs old so bear with me haha. I know basic mechanics and i took on this car as a project. I have a 87 Z28. Got it basically for free and its in pretty good shape, till you look at the engine bay. I have no clue what motor was in here before but i don't know much about wiring harnesses. It has a Carburated 350 in it now that is only hooked to the tranny and motor mounts. NO WIRING. so i have this mess of plugs and electrical that i can not tell what is what, where most of it would plug in and my problem is i wanna keep most the wiring harness in but i'm looking at putting in a basic Carburated 350 that runs and doing the basic wiring for it while also keeping the wiring for lights,heater,wipers, etc. I'm just starting out on this car and forum. If this is not in the right spot let me know but any help as to pictures of wiring harness that will show me what is what on it and how i can remove what i don't need from the harness.

 

Check with member Pocket, he makes a plug-n-play harness for carb engine swaps....

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/carb...-new-carb.html

 

Hi Nick , welcome to TGO !

About the car ;

Yes , wiring is of course very important to getting it running , but your far from that stage of the restoration yet . The first thing you should be doing is to get the car on solid ground and go over it 100% looking for rot . The plastic ground effects can hide all kinds of rot monsters and to start the restoration you've gotta make sure you have something worth restoring . Things like the kicked in windshield and bullet holes in the door mean the car has been besieged by vandals on at least one occasion so literally every inch will need to be checked for everything from sand down the carb to a fuel tank full of **** (yep , actually seen that on a junkyard car a friend saved once , seems all the junkyard dudes thought it'd be funny to use the gas filler as a toilet !) .

Providing the rot monster hasn't destroyed the floors , subframes , or firewall (the three most common rot areas) it will need a complete cleaning and glass replacement to close the car up and stop any further rain damage . It's great you got it for free , but with all it needs you'll be spending on the restoration close to what a drivable condition one would cost . I understand you want this as a project and good for you ! not a lot of folks would take on a project so , , well lets just say , extensive .

Wiring wise , if your keeping with a non computer controlled carb , an awful lot of the wiring will end up unused . Myself , I'd be trying to totally restore whatever it's original induction system was , it's my opinion that TPI , TBI , or CC Carb are all better choices than non CC Carb , but that's just my opinion only . Others love the non CC carb and this debate is as old (almost) as the Chevy VS Ford thing .

Anyway , a search around this site will produce ALL kinds of valuable info , things like the History/Originality section will show you how to decode your VIN so as to determine exactly what it was built with .

I wish you the best of luck with your project , and remember ;

NOT ONE DIME IS TO BE SPENT TILL YOU ASSESS THE RUST/ROT !!!!!!

 

Well luckily towards the end of the month i'll also be picking up a 1986 IROC that a friend had picked up to pull the motor, tranny, running gear, and wiring harness for a hot rod truck and i'm getting the body for fairly cheap. I'm hoping to take the two and build one good one. As for rust as i went through the car it is actually in pretty good shape. I was cleaning the windsheild up and the car and as i did i couldnt really find any rust so i got lucky there. I'd like to get it fully restored like i said but as of right now i'm just trying to get it in running order. Once i can find out what every little plug on the wiring harness is then i can start.