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91 K5 -Procrastination Build - bikini top!

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:zombie18: wordy post :doah:

FINALLY, the bugs are worked out of the harness! I got the harness from a "Harnessworx" on FB, the harness is nice and appears to be well built. It's taken some time to work out some glitches, apparently the builders wiring diagram for '91 exterior lighting has some errors which caused me to install / remove / send back because initially I only had headlights then the turn signals were flashing opposite corners together (LF w/ RR, RF w/ LR). Everything seems to be correct now so I can finally proceed with permanently installing it and connecting some accessory wiring.

The builder is a nice guy and considerably cheaper than Painless, etc BUT he's pretty slow on communication and I've seen some negative feedback on another forum. Overall, my experience was really good because he was willing to do all of the custom request I had (most were deleting unwanted circuits) whereas Painless wouldn't even talk about mods, they wanted me to buy their big universal Chevy harness and just tie up wiring for any unused circuits - Hello, this is what I was trying to get away from! :surepal:

I love haw the new harness is really small and clean, you almost can't see it now that it's installed.

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I picked up a nice big speedo from @Shawn so I spent a few min mod'ing the instrument bezel to accept it and a tach, I'm pretty happy with the final look. I also picked up a little switch panel on Amazon, I really wanted a USB port for phone charging (far right) and at some point I'll add some interior and exterior lighting to the switches. It's not in yet but I have a fuel level gauge to go in the bottom left where the a/c vent was.

I need to search around and see if I can find a CB or similar that is compatible with family channel radios most folks around here carry, it'll go in the stock radio spot.

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Interesting find while installing a new coil, I found that half of the terminal on the end of the coil wire was gone. :eek1: I have no idea how long it's been like this and it ran great, never had any indication of a problem. I guess it's a testament to how well an MSD set up can jump a gap.

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No pieces in the coil. In fact, there's green corrosion.

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Looks bad ass on the gauge setup! Crazy on your coil. Never seen that before.
 
Ground the Tach straight to the block, was super bad sharing grounds. It's still pretty chatty but better now.
 
My tach picked up noise from everything, the blower, turn signals, etc. It improved when I grounded the tach to the block, instead of the common stud I used for other gauges.
 
Oh ok, I see what you’re saying. That’s pretty crazy that it was that sensitive.
 
Another trick you can do it you have signal wires is take the pair (or another wire you ground at both ends if there isn't a pair) and put them in your drill and twist them up lengthwise like a spiral, you'll need to keep a little tension so they don't bunch up. The helps cancel out or shield the noise bigtime. The factory does the "twisted pair" technique for all cam and crank signals, etc.
 
folkenheath said:
Another trick you can do it you have signal wires is take the pair (or another wire you ground at both ends if there isn't a pair) and put them in your drill and twist them up lengthwise like a spiral, you'll need to keep a little tension so they don't bunch up. The helps cancel out or shield the noise bigtime. The factory does the "twisted pair" technique for all cam and crank signals, etc.
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My MSD instructions suggested doing this for the 2 wire pigtail that runs between the box and distributor. :thumb:
 
nvrenuf said:
My MSD instructions suggested doing this for the 2 wire pigtail that runs between the box and distributor. :thumb:
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Agreed! Low voltage signals (like cam, crank, RPM, distributor magnetic pickup, etc) are much more susceptible to interference, especially from high voltage sources like the coil feed wires, spark plug wires, etc.

I had to do the twisted pair to my speedometer signal wires, because my electric speedometer would jump around sometimes. Twisting the signal wires eliminated it.

This is also why I typically mount an ignition box on opposite sides of the vehicle than an ECM, etc. Also, don't run high voltage wires parallel to low voltage wires, try to run them further apart and just cross once or less if possible. And keep your grounds solid, and frequent. Ground loop issues can cause the higher voltage noise to seek the path of least resistance to get back to ground, which can be where you don't want it. I always make sure the body, engine block, and battery are also grounded to the frame with solid heavy ground cables.
 
mrk5 said:
Looking good! It's way cleaner than the inside of my dash!
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Thanks!

Of course, now that I make headway on putting the gauges in the factory bezel my wife says I need to go with a more racecar like dash. :doah:
 
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if ya end up wanting to sell the dash .. ya know.. i might know a guy haha:whistle:
 
bix said:
if ya end up wanting to sell the dash .. ya know.. i might know a guy haha:whistle:
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lol I'll remember that.

Honestly, I don't see anything like that happening. A more racy dash would be cool but I like the factory one enough to live with it. I don't really like the diy4x dash enough to spend $750+ on one and I haven't seen anyone else building anything (especially not a top only sheet metal cover to replace the dash pad). My real conundrum is my dash pad is SHOT(!) so I'm not sure I have enough decent material to glue a dash cover to which means I'd have to buy a decent pad ($100? w/o shipping) plus the $160 for the dash cover itself. :dunno:
 
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