1966 Buick Electra 225 Nailhead HEI conversion TROUBLE TROUBLE TROUBLE!

after installing anhei,I ran into another issue and cannot find in the manual. I just intalled a big cap HEI replacing the points, connecting the one wire from ignition to hei, left me with a black wire that was connected to the old distributor and dont know what toi do with it. It is a singer wire that comes through a small hole in the firewall almost at the center and seems to be hooked into something in the dash, but dont see it actually going to the ignition switch. May not make sense and def has me stumped. Any help would be appreciated!

 

I’m pretty sure that’s a ground wire that was on the - side of the coil.

 

Heya Jaye! Thanks for that! I thought it might have been, but neither instruction, diagrams, manuals, and my own common since showed a damn thing, lol! I am guessing straight to the engine block maybe? I wanna finish this up, but hesitate thinking Ill fry something I appreciate ya!

 

Chaunce,

Lets go over the original distributor & how it was wired. You had a + & - on the original coil. The - side was hooked to the points inside the dist. with a black wire. IF on the - side there was a tach from the factory, which could be ordered when new, the wire that usually ended up going inside the vehicle was brown & was a feed for the tach. Someone could have added the black wire since the car probably didn,t come from the factory with a tach. ALSO someone could have hooked up a kill switch inside the car with a toggle swich so that when the toggle was flipped it would ground the - side of the coil so the vehicle wouldn't start .A sort of anti-theft deterent.
The + side of the coil was a wire that came from the ignition switch & somewhere in the system a resistence wire was added to cut down on the voltage going to the points. This made the points last longer but wasn't enough to power the points while cranking when cold. GM to solve that problem there was a yellow wire that came from the starter hooked up somewhere along the line that hooked up to the end of the resistence wire. Now this allowed full voltage to the points in the crank position only.
The black wire going into the vehicle should/more than likely be removed from the car. Now you have another problem. You need to supply a full 12 volts to the HEI. It will not run properly with the resistence wire installed as there is not enough voltage for the HEI to operate properly. You can also eliminate the yellow wire as it's not needed any longer. Just dis-connect it from the "R" terminal on the starter.
There are a variety of ways to accomplish this. To me the easiest way is to add a relay to the resistence wire. Use the resistence wire as a trigger to one terminal on the relay. Get 12 volts from the key on running position to another terminal on the relay. The last terminl goes to the HEI.
Understand???

Tom T.

 

I do I do! Ill never look on the cluster$!#@ we call the internet again. It turns out that is exactly what it wasw and was held up on that lopne wire for some time. You saved me a lot more wasted time and effort and would tip ya if I could I thatnk you and so does Mezzy(car)!

 

My address is above.

Tom T.

 

Now I have an issue a bit not starting everything is wired appropriately except for the fact that it's a new battery and I'm not getting 12 volts atall! The other issue is I only have one IGN1 terminal not two and I see some people were stating to wire the ignition one with the starter R terminal. Is that correct? I should probably take a little breather from it but it bugs me until I get this stuff done I appreciate all your help thank you so much