71 Challenger with many challenges

[Roctania]

I am working on this resto-mod with a friend.

he says I am a perfectionist that takes too long.

I say he cuts corners and things end up half-a$$ed and that takes even LONGER to fix.

I was looking under the dash Saturday, my first peek at the dash wiring.  HE installed the dash.
What's this?  Loose wires... AT THE AMMETER....

KIND OF important, I think, to secure those nuts properly.  Since basically ALL the electricity passes thru that junction.

*sigh*

[HANDM]

I would just connect them and get  a voltmeter....... for him 

[Roctania]

Well, the Challenges just keep on coming

Backup/ Start Safety wire finally secured to the switch on the trans.
Evidently the NEW switch is a little larger OD or something, making fitment of the connector a nightmare.

Almost time for plug wires, let's set the timing
Oh damn bumped past TDC
Turn CCW - nope, loosens the bolt.
Fine, turn it CW instead. Shoot for timing on #6

OK, turn the dist'r back and forth until a spark occurs.
Nope.

Now, when I undo the battery cable, THEN we get a spark from the coil. Repeatedly.
Grounding a wire to the distributor makes a spark.
Connecting the two harness wires for the distributor and disconnecting them makes a spark

Pull the NEW flamethrower distributor so I can spin it by hand. No Spark. Ever.

Find the OEM distributor, attach that to the car's wiring. PLENTY of spark.

Check LameThrower wires for continuity with ohm meter. Always infinite, never a closed circuit.

Magnets on rotating piece seem ok
Pull pickup and use a far stronger magnet to trigger it. Nothing.
Colleague takes LameThrower to store, they say you can get a new pickup coil for $90 from Summit.

OEM distributor was never refurbished, and no one wants to put it on the new pretty engine.

So, now we can't even get spark yet.

With NEW parts.

I did have the distributor apart during the FIVE HOUR fitment process, to see whether it was the inner part [not] or the housing [yes] that prevented it from being installed.  The LameThrower interfered with the Edelbrock heads and required three hours of careful head grinding to allow the distributor to fit in and adjust.

I did get the choke and carb grounded with a dual wire. Evidently the clear coating on the shiny carb prevents a ground path, therefore the electric choke was not going to work right.  We don't need static electricity building up in a fuel/ air mixing device either.

[fy469rtse]

Best thing I think you can do is get a factory service manual for this,
Search the threads on wiring upgrades and most important ,
That amp gauge bypass , read fire hazard !
Great and simple upgrades to prevent , oh well you don't wont to find out out,
I don't think challengers wiring ills much different to chargers

[Roctania]

We have the factory service manual and body manual. And a Chilton's which is good only for vague general info like capacities and light bulbs.

[fy469rtse]

look for the wiring upgrades on here and repeat on that car 

[Roctania]

Is there ANY chance that hooking up the wiring harness wrong killed the Flamethrower distributor?  It's just a switching circuit, right?

We have the ballast resistor in place- it appears to be two individual resistors in one housing. At first I thought the two terminals on each end were connected together, but ohm meter says otherwise.  

We have two of us working on this project, and it's possible the other guy put some wires together wrong I guess.  It is a new engine harness, and a 2-wire plug goes to the distributor- hard to mess up TWO wires. There is a 10% chance of getting a 50/50 thing right the first guess.
======================================

Here is the result of grounding the choke coil to its housing screw then branching off to the carb mounting bolt, so that the carb itself is also grounded:



Voila' now we have zero volts at the outlet of the choke coil, what a pain. Glad I checked. Red wire is temporary hot wire to battery, the loose yellow is the proper normal harness wire for the choke.

[Roctania]

I am pleased to report that another 1971 Challenger is alive and running.  

Initial engine firing two weeks ago was interrupted when the spark stopped.  Traced to very bad repair of a defunct distributor pickup/ wires.  Finally got time to redo that item, and last night the engine got in a good half hour of run time.  Heated the headers glowing red hot.  Finally got it to idle down and more or less behave so we can do some timing and carb adjustmemts.

Damned March air cleaner hit on the hood.  We had it modified to sit lower on the carb, then it hit the linkage and held the throttle open if secured in place. W/o that PITA thing in place though, it went pretty smoothly.  

Sounds GREAT.  No water leaks this time since I replaced the POS March water pump too-short zinc plated screws with sealed proper length stainless units.

I did not build the engine on this one, just assembled the car from the components and got the engine in and running.

The air cleaner should be modified to bite at the air:

http://s19.photobucket.com/user/Rocket_Science_442/media/15007_8%20Air%20Cleaner%20Bop_zpsloycun3u.mp4.html