Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Knowing you had those burned wires under the hood, and seeing this, I would pull the dash and see what all has been hacked. Having said that, if I knew nothing under the dash was altered with the engine change, and if I was sure the car was running and everything was working ok with no burned wires before that, I might be tempted to postpone that job until I had to pull the dash for a heater core or something.
Hopefully, for now you just need to power the red wire of your Pertronix module. Find the green/red stripe wire that goes from the ignition switch connector on the steering column to the tach connector. It might already be spliced into. Or, I believe on XR7’s with ammeter, the green/red stripe wire also goes out under the hood and connects to pin 2 (S) terminal of the voltage regulator. Splice into one of those two places with the red wire. Then use your new engine harness under the hood, and toss that taped up melted mess of a harness in the pics. With the module properly wired, you might at least be able to get back to where you were. At least that is what I would try.
OMG. You have an impending disaster on your hands. Once you see wire nuts on any automotive wiring, you know whoever worked on it doesn’t have a clue as to what he/she/it is doing. Wire Nuts do not belong in a vibratory environment, PERIOD! Once you see them things, it is time to disconnect the battery and completely overhaul the wiring.
I’m not trying to promote my business; rather, I’m trying to protect a fellow car enthusiast from losing all of his investment (and mind). Please, please…get this taken care of by a professional if you are in over your head.
Not sure where to take this and have it sorted out. Hopefully I can get something sorted out myself. I can certainly remedy the wire nut situation. I can also say the burnt wiring under the hood had nothing to do with the engine replacement. It was a separate carburetor fire issue from a bad float pouring fuel onto a hot engine right under the coil. Everything worked before the engine replacement with the current wiring mess setup. Nothing would have been done under the dash in the engine replacement, so everything is the same as it was when everything worked. Any wiring alterations if there were any would have been done under the hood during the engine swap out. I’m going to do the best I can to get everything sorted out.
If only the person that sold it to me would have been more honest, open and transparent, I wouldn’t be dealing with all of the issues I’ve had with this car.
Frustrating for sure. If it helps, my car was pretty much exactly as advertised and it’s still cost WAY more time and money than I ever imagined. And I STILL don’t have a reliable enough car to take to shows after 7 years. Next time, maybe I’ll be the guy that buys from owners like us that have already done all the work. And it will cost me way less than they had in it.
Looks like the red/white wire is connected to the very small blue wire. Looks to go up towards the dash. Probably some kind of tach work around? It goes through the firewall with the pertronix and blue wire with black stripe.
I really need some help here. Today I replaced the dash gauge feed harness with a new one. Eliminated the two mystery wires. It starts right away but also dies right away and won’t continue to run. Also replaced the power window relay but that didn’t fix that issue. Still not working as it should. It did work when I jumped the terminals on the old relay. Not sure what’s going on. Please help.
There are no “mystery wires” on a dash cluster connector. Now then, your tach doesn’t plug into the dash cluster connectors, but a male and female pair of wires (hint hint…these are two wires!) from the underdash plug into the wires coming from the back of the tach. If those wires are not attached, the engine will start and immediately die upon the key reverting back from CRANK to RUN. Why is that? The tach must be inline with the ignition switch and the coil. You can bypass the tach by jumpering the male female pair of wires coming from the underdash harness. The male pin is the pink resistor wire and the female pin usually has red/green and/or red/yellow wires attached to it.
So this mystery non-factory harness (red and white wire and blue and black wire) is actually the tach then that has been re-routed from the factory wiring for whatever reason. So I’ll hook them back up and it should at least run.
Based on the photos that you posted I would be looking for a complete main wiring harness. I would not hook up anything or even put power to the car because of the likelihood of an electrical fire.
If you are not capable of repairing it properly - and based on the questions that you have asked I think electricity is a complete mystery to you - you either need expert onsite help or have an expert repair the car.
If it is not factory who knows what it is for. If it is for the tach that is just another sign that someone has been messing with the wiring. If you do not follow both ends of these wires to see what they are hooked up to then hooking them up to something else is much like a game of Russian Roulette. Who knows what will happen? I hope that you will have a fire extinguisher close by if you do decide to try this.
The one photo you posted shows what looks like the plug on the back of the ignition switch and it looks like it has already started to melt down. If that is correct then it is just another sign that you have more and bigger problems than you think.
No doubt it’s a hot mess. One that I had no hand in. I’m not sure what type of expert to look for or where to look. Can’t just google classic car hot mess repair and find someone. On the other hand I’m willing to learn and try to fix it right. I always have a fire extinguisher nearby.
Connected the mystery harness back to the Dist and Bat posts of the coil and it runs (albeit rich) and doesn’t cut off. The tach still doesn’t work nor do the power windows. I know everyone is fed up with this, tired of hearing about it, me inquiring about a solution, etc. I feel the same way. I want to get things that worked before to work again. Is there a way to rewire the two systems that don’t currently work (tach and power windows) and bypass the extremely botched current wiring harness? I would be more than glad to have midlife to overhaul this harness but after looking at it over and over again and trying to solve all the previous band aids and patches that have been made over the years I’m not sure it’s salvageable or even worth the effort to remove. Not sure what to do to solve this problem.
Yes, that’s me. I’m about the only one in the country doing this for individuals (WCCC does some in-house restoration of wiring) for Ford wiring. In your case, I would be prepared to send in the underdash and headlight harnesses in. I charge very reasonable rates and turn-around times are typically 1-2 days. However, I am planning on moving across town in the next few weeks, so please contact me before shipping.
If I judge your harness not to be salvagable (that’s rare and usually due to shorted wires), I have some in stock that I can exchange for yours. Sometimes, the amount of effort needed to restore a harness is so much that I will exchange it with the customer’s authorization.
I would be damned frustrated too. Removing the dash and getting access to the harness to figure it all out is a big job. But for what it’s worth, I wouldn’t try to make any more work-arounds until I understood what all has been modified and/or damaged. And it’s not that much more work from that point to just pull the harness out and send it to Midlife to let him figure out what all is wrong and fix it. Maybe he could even add a connector to the tach power feed to power your Pertronix red wire. It sounds like that’s all you need if your factory dash and engine harnesses are correct.
As far as the tach goes, you don’t need to touch the other wiring to have it work.
The RED wire goes to a switch power line so it turns on and off with the key.
The BLACK wire goes to ground.
The GREEN wire goes to the DISTRIBUTOR* side of the coil.
*Normally this is the one marked with a - symbol, but if yours is running rich and the tach is not working that way I suspect the + and - sides of the coil may be reversed.
