Wiring for starter - help needed

[rechinca]

Fun part about old trucks is figuring out what some chuckle-head did to it before you!

71 C10, originally 350 with a 350 from a 72 Chevelle in its place now. Found a crappy length of wire looped around the ring terminal for the pink wire to the starter. I cut back the PO tape job to find a cut end on a black wire taped into the factory harness along side the pink wire (which is the resistor wire I believe). Front of solenoid has 3 attachment points to it. One is for the lead from the battery, one for the pink, but what is the third for and what do I do with the black wire? Wiring is not my forte, and I want to make sure this is cleaned up properly.

[Husker]

Ttt

[RichardJ]

Your picture rotated, enlarged with R & S terminal markings pointed out. Sometimes you just gotta open your eye balls. Most solenoids are marked.

The Starter "S" terminal should have a Purple wire ( 12PPL) connected to it. Follow that pink wire back a little farther and see if you can find a cleaner area that may look more purple.

A second wire to the solenoid should be Yellow for the ballast Resistor By-Pass circuit. The Yellow wire will be joined to the Resistor wire and tapped up inside the harness.

The Black wire, you'll just have to follow it into the harness by your lonesome to see where it goes.

The Resistor wire will have a cloth outer covering. It will be old, dirty, faded with no distinguishable color.

[rechinca]

Richard, thanks for rotating the pic and the info! I was elbows deep in grease and didn’t catch the photo being upside down. It’s about what I figured and had gleaned from the diagrams. I cleaned up the wire insulation and yep it was purple, thought it was pink originally. It still had that heavy ring terminal on it so I went ahead and put some heat shrink on it and put it on the correct terminal. Here is the weird part, the truck was running and starting fine. Can’t imagine though that the purple wire having a wire attached to it by winding it through the ring terminal and covering it with tape was good. Fun times ahead. As old as the harness is I may just order a new engine harness section. Tomorrow I shall start cutting the tape back and see what we have. Anyone else have more thoughts I’d appreciate them. More to follow.

[rechinca]

So here is what I found after pulling that harness and finding a homemade taped up jumble. The ballast wire was cut and a crappy junction put in its place with regular wires. 2 BLK wires were spliced into the Light colored Balast wire. One went to the coil and the other went with the PURPLE wire down to the starter, except it was cut and not attached to anything. Based on the condition of the wires overall and the splicing of the BALAST wire I think I am better off moving toward purchasing a new engine harness for $100 and replacing the whole thing.

Richard thanks again for the confirming my suspicions and the suggestions. I am relatively new to the Chevy world and had done much of the same work on the ‘71 Ford truck. Based on what I have seen with this harness I can’t figure out how this thing ever ran, but it also may be why I had a constant drain on the battery. Funds allowed me to buy a bunch of new parts, but time to bite the bullet and add one more to the shopping list while I am under the hood and disassembled this far.

[kwmech]

Do you still have points or converted to HEI?

[RichardJ]

I would replace that ring terminal with new. I can see in the picture that some of the copper wire strands are broken.
Inside the solenoid there are two windings that pull the solenoid plunger. There is a Pull-In winding and a Hold-In winding. For a brief instant, both windings are energized pulling the plunger and together drawing about 45 Amps through the ignition switch and through the purple wire.
Once the plunger is pulled all the way IN, the Pull-In winding is, in effect removed from the circuit and the Hold-In winding alone is now drawing 11 Amps and holding the plunger while you hold the ign key and the starter is cranking the engine.

You can see the cloth covered resistance wire. The resistance wire is Nichrome and does not solder very well at all. That is the reason Chevy crimps it to the copper wires.

That wire segment from the crimp junction down to the "R" terminal on the solenoid should not be used if you use a HEI distributor.

[geezer#99]

Originally Posted by rechinca

So here is what I found after pulling that harness and finding a homemade taped up jumble. The ballast wire was cut and a crappy junction put in its place with regular wires. 2 BLK wires were spliced into the Light colored Balast wire. One went to the coil and the other went with the PURPLE wire down to the starter, except it was cut and not attached to anything. Based on the condition of the wires overall and the splicing of the BALAST wire I think I am better off moving toward purchasing a new engine harness for $100 and replacing the whole thing.

Richard thanks again for the confirming my suspicions and the suggestions. I am relatively new to the Chevy world and had done much of the same work on the ‘71 Ford truck. Based on what I have seen with this harness I can’t figure out how this thing ever ran, but it also may be why I had a constant drain on the battery. Funds allowed me to buy a bunch of new parts, but time to bite the bullet and add one more to the shopping list while I am under the hood and
disassembled this far.

Hopefully you know that the junction of the resistor wire with the other two wires is a factory set up.
That’s how they were wired. Usually they were yellow though.
The one wire that originally hooked to your starter solenoid supplied 12v to the coil only during starting. Once started the power was stopped from the solenoid and the resistor wire limited the power to your coil to about 9v. Too much voltage would overheat your coil and it wouldn’t last long.

[rechinca]

Still have points in it right now. Debating on going the HEI route while I’m at. I wanted to eventually and they make that engine harness set up for HEI vs points so that will probably be the route I take. Now I just need to source one if anyone happens to have one handy!

geezer, the coil I had was older than dirt and covered in about 1/16” of grease from a leaky oil pressure gauge line. Between that and the creative wiring, no idea how she was able to keep from burning down. The old Delco-Remy coil was going to be replaced so might as well keep cleaning it up properly. I know those wires were normally set up as a crimp, but as sloppy as that one looked, plus wires that were truly black and not just oil stained yellow insulation with a crappy tape job, I figured that was part of the creative wiring. Time to add to the shopping list and at least I know those items will be good from here out.