Restarting My '70 Nova Project

[BravoXray]

Rewiring my car was probly the best thing I ever did for it.

I learned a long time ago when I had semi trucks and trailers, that one you have to hunt down problems in a wiring harness, it's time to replace the wiring harness. I did that on three of my flatbeds/stepdecks and it was worth every penny and saved a lot of time repairing bad harnesses. I used modular harnesses like are used on new trailers, and they were reasonably priced, under $300 for the whole works.

 

[BravoXray]

The last few days I've been working on getting all the wiring finished up. First thing was to get and install a new positive battery cable, as the one I had lacked about 6 inched of being long to get to the battery terminal. I thought I had some 0 gauge cable, but I didn't, so I picked one up at the local battery shop. The terminal on the starter isn't easy to get to with the headers on, cold fingers didn't help, but I finally got it on. I cleaned off a boss on the front of the block so it would make a good connection, and installed the ground cable. It's a little long, so I might shorten it later.
I got all the lights working after a couple of glitches, i.e. no backup lights, and wrong color wires on the front park.turn lights.
The backup lights sort of stumped me for a while, I had power to the backup switch, power back up to the transmission harness plug that connects to the bulkhead connector, but no power to the wire coming out of that connector. That connector is a female, and using a paper clip, there was power there, but when it was connected no power came out the other side. Pulled the connector apart and found I hadn't gotten the pin pushed in all the way and wasn't contacting the male pin. I got it seated correctly, plugged back together and I had backup lights.
The turn signals have a blue and a black wire coming out to connect to the harness, blue for turn, black for parking lights. The harness was wired opposite to that, black for turn and blue for park light. Hmmmm. So, I swapped the wires in the connectors on the lights and connected them to give them a test. Well, it appears they are wired incorrectly, so black goes to blue, and blue goes to black. They are even swapped according to the factory wiring diagram.
Next, I ran the wire for the water temp sender, tying it to the main harness on the firewall and then forward past the distributor, up to the sender, installed an eye terminal and attached it to the sender. I checked it by shorting it to ground, and that made the gauge read full scale hot, so it works. Did the same with the oil pressure sender, and it works too.
I cut to length, installed braid on and put the connector on the horn wire. I had tested the horn and it works, but someone had bent the mounting bracket, I have no idea why, but I heated it up and got it bent back close to how it should be shaped. Popped it in the blasting cabinet and got rid of the burned paint, then gave the whole unit a fresh coat of black paint. Looks like new now.
So, I think the only wiring to be addressed is to secure the harness that runs across the radiator support with some loom clamps and screws.
I need to blast and repaint the top radiator mount as it looks pretty bad, then I can get the radiator installed, heater and radiator hoses installed and fill it with coolant. I also need to get 5 or 10 gallons of gas and put it in the tank, and it should be ready to start up.
Getting closer!

 

[BleedingOrange]

Awesome. Looking forward to the long awaited start-up video. You are certainly getting there. Should be a very exciting spring for you when you can finally get your beautiful car on the road.

 

[BravoXray]

I haven't had a lot of time lately to work on the Nova, as my friend has finally found a house in the area, and have been spending a few hours a day loading, moving and unloading her stuff. And she has a lot of stuff. A lot. I've also been doing a bunch of repair on some of her furniture, mainly a couple of antique dressers and drawers. Fortunately her new place is only about eight miles away, so the trips are short.

While checking out the electrical system on the Nova, I discovered a couple of problems, the EFI pump in the tank wasn't getting power and the EFI hand controller wasn't powering up. After a bit of investigation, I figured out that the extension cable I installed between the EFI power hub and the hand controller was wired incorrectly. If I unplugged it from the hub, the pump would run. I had depinned the connector on the end of the cable that goes through the firewall to be able to get it through the grommet, but according to my diagram and pictures, I had put it back together correctly. The wires on the connector on the hand controller were arranged differently though, swapped left to right and swapped to to bottom. Apparently, the extension was only meant to extend the cable to the throttle body unit not to the hand unit. So I depinned it again and arranged the connectors to match those on the hand unit. Plugged everything back in and it all works now. The fun part was that to get to the connector at fault, I had to remove the dash, as it was directly behind the instrument cluster, and tear the harness apart. What a pain in the ass, but I got it apart without breaking anything except for breaking a wire on the cruise control indicator light connector, and screwing up the paint on the top of the steering column. I'm going to have to remove it to be able to fix the paint. Bah!
The other issue I found was the heater speed control didn't work correctly. The motor would run on low speed even in the off position, and was very touchy to get high speed to work correctly. In addition the wires to the switch were really too short, so I added about four inches to them so there is a little slack in them now. I fiddled with the switch for a couple of hours and never was able to get it to work like it should, so I ordered a new one and it'll be here tomorrow. Once it have that, I'll put the dash back in and pull the steering column and get the paint fixed on it.
Sunday Brian picked up the hood hinges and a few other parts that need to ba painted in Hot Rod black to match the rest of the engine bay parts. Once I get those back, I can get the radiator in and the left fender put on for more progress.

Working in the dash area is hard on my hands, got a case of dash rash.

 

[BravoXray]

So, did you ever feel like you were going backwards on a project? That's how it's been feeling lately.
As I said, I had to pull the instrument cluster out to get to the cable from the EFI to the hand controller, which meant I had to remove the radio, drop the steering column down, which meant I had to take the flange that seals the column to the firewall loose. Looking at the steering column, I decided to just pull it out and fix the paint. I sanded it down, taped off the areas above and below that area and gave it a couple of coats of satin black. Let it dry overnight pulled the tape, which pulled paint off the area around the ignition key. Grrrrr!
So, today I took the wheel off the column, removed the turn signal lever that has the switches on it for the cruise control, whose connector got stuck in the column requiring more disassembly, pulled the turn signal switch and cable out, and removed the ignition switch. So now I can sand the upper part of the column down to bare metal and Brian will paint it with the Hot Rod black paint.
The cable on the cruise control switch was about six feet long, and it only needs to be two feet long, so I brought it up to the house and shortened it up so I don't have a big wad of extra cable to deal with.
I also did some cable management on the radio, which had a lot of extra cable that goes to the media header the takes SD cards, USB drives or a 3.5mm plug from an external audio source, and tucked the pigtails with RCA plugs for external amplifiers out of the way, so that wil eliminate a big glob of cables to deal with behind the radio.
That done, I went ahead and put the instrument cluster back in, which was a patience testing job, especially getting the speedo cable snapped back in place. After a lot of struggling and cursing got the heater controls back in place and secured. Next I got the headlight switch back in, also with considerable difficulty and swearing, as it's pretty crowded in that area. I put the radio back in, which went very easily, thankfully.
I also discovered that when I was working on sanding the damaged paint area and moving the column around on the bench, somehow I broke the turn signal switch when the lever screws fast to it, and it is pretty loose now. I can get just that piece, the cancel cam, so I have one ordered and on the way.
So, once I get the column painted, I can get it assembled, back in and be back to the point I was a couple of weeks ago.

No one said restoring a car was easy.

 

[BleedingOrange]

Nice to see you are back working on your beautiful project. I can understand your frustration. It probably would feel even worse if you were doing this type of work for someone else, and not for yourself. From following along in this thread from the very beginning, I got the sense that you are the type of person that will do it only one way, and that is, to get it as good as you possibly can, whatever that takes. I really admire that trait in a person. You,re on the home stretch, and know that spring is around the corner, and as the days get warmer, you will start feeling more energized and hopefully you will get the strength to get your beautiful project finished up and start enjoying it. I,m positive every time you take it out and park it you will be receiving all kinds of compliments on it and it will help put the frustrations you had along the way into the rear view mirror. I wished I lived closer. I would love to see and hear your finished car up close, and watch it coming and going down the nice paved roads in your area.

 

[dodge man]

I replaced two blend door actuators on my 2010 Dodge Challenger. My arms looked like your hands. I finally figured out the installed razor blades under the dash.

 

[BravoXray]

Nice to see you are back working on your beautiful project. I can understand your frustration. It probably would feel even worse if you were doing this type of work for someone else, and not for yourself. From following along in this thread from the very beginning, I got the sense that you are the type of person that will do it only one way, and that is, to get it as good as you possibly can, whatever that takes. I really admire that trait in a person. You,re on the home stretch, and know that spring is around the corner, and as the days get warmer, you will start feeling more energized and hopefully you will get the strength to get your beautiful project finished up and start enjoying it. I,m positive every time you take it out and park it you will be receiving all kinds of compliments on it and it will help put the frustrations you had along the way into the rear view mirror. I wished I lived closer. I would love to see and hear your finished car up close, and watch it coming and going down the nice paved roads in your area.

Thanks for the kind words.
When I first started the restoration project, it was just to repair a rusty floor on the driver's side, bur once I pulled the carpet, I found the passenger side was full of pin holes too. I knew there was some rust popping out around the rear wheel openings, but once I dug into it, it was a lot worse than I thought, and it all went down hill from there. The engine was also using a lot of oil, so I was just going to re-ring and reseal it, but then I founds a 400 SBC truck block for sale, and one thing led to another and I ended up building the 434. The original 350 and Muncie are both completely rebuilt, preserved and bagged for future use.
The project has taught a couple of things, first, it's going to cost five times what you though it would. Second, it's going to take ten times as long as you thought it would.
Fortunately, I have the time, money and patience to put the car back together the way I want to do it. The only thing I would have liked to change would have been to find a date code correct 396 375hp L-78 engine to put in it, but they are hard to find and stupid expensive. Recently a bare .030" over block and bare rectangular port heads were posted for sale on a forum I frequent that would have been over $4000. I could get a new aftermarket block and good aluminum heads for about the same money.
I know my OCD and meticulousness have cost me a lot of time and money, but it will be the way I want it when it's done and that's all I care about, and I don't have a deadline to aim for. Everyone has their vision of how their car is put together, whether anyone else thinks it's right or wrong, and that's the way it should be. It's just another way to express ones individuality.

Brian is going to repaint the steering column with the Hot Road black, which will be a lot more durable that rattle can paint, which is what I should have done to begin with. I also gave him the front bumper brackets to paint too, while he's at it. Fortunately, he has a couple of days off work this week, so he should have them done this week and I can get the column back together and in the car this weekend.

 

[BravoXray]

I replaced two blend door actuators on my 2010 Dodge Challenger. My arms looked like your hands. I finally figured out the installed razor blades under the dash.

That's certainly what it seems like on any vehicle I ever worked on.
My friend Brian has a 2010 Challenger too, in B5 blue with the 5.7 Hemi and six speed Tremec. Cool, fast car. Also has a 70 Charger R/T 440 with FI-TECH EFI and a 4L60E that I installed for him.

 

[BravoXray]

I got the steering column back in the car and buttoned up today, but not without a couple of challenges. Brian got it painted for me and dropped it and the front bumper brackets off on Saturday. I started putting it back together and discovered that you have to leave the turn signal switch out so you can install the ignition key tumbler. Then when I went to install the turn signal lever with the cruise control controls on it, I discovered it was broken where it screws fast to the cancel cam. The lever is a tube that has the 4 conductor cable running through it exiting through a slot cut in the tube, and is then flattened out and a hole for the screw drilled in it. They also ground the sides of the flattened part down so it would fit in the slot in the cancel cam, which turned it into two tabs, one with the slot in it, with practically no metal on each side of the slot, so it broke off. I pondered WTF to do with it, so I smoothed out the sharp edges and made a little C channel out of some .030" aluminum, which holds the remaining tab in place and supports it better. Seems to be solid enough to work for now. I fired off an email to Dakota Digital with pictures, describing what the problem is. I'll see what they have to day.
I got the column back in, with a towel wrapped around it to protect it from any more damage this time, but it took a bit of finagling to get it just right on the steering box shaft to get the retaining bolt lined up with the slot in the shaft. Hooked up the turn signal and ignition harnesses and got it bolted up the the dash. The thin foam gasket that seals the two piece plate that covers the hole in the firewall was torn, so I made a new one up and got it and the plate installed along with the plastic cover that mounts below it. I got the steering wheel installed, but it wasn't clocked right, so I pulled it off this afternoon and reinstalled it where I think it should be really close to correct.
I pulled the fuel line off the EFI unit, attached a hose that went into a large coffee can, ran a couple of quarts of gas into it to flush out the fuel lines, and hooked it back up.
Next, made up an 8ga. wire to run from the alternator to the positive battery post. That entailed going to three auto stores and not being able to find and ring terminals for 8ga. with to a 5/16" hole. I ended up buying a few for 6ga. wire and trimming the part that crimps on the wire so it would crimp and hold the 8ga. wire properly. Got it run and connected, so It'll keep the battery charged.
Last thing this afternoon, I bolted the painted brackets to the front bumper, so it's ready to install once I get the left front fender installed.
Next on the list is to paint the forward facing part of the radiator core so the core doesn't show up behind the grille. I'm looking forward to getting it installed, filled with coolant and firing up the 434 for the first time in over a year and a half.