Hello all! Posting in much better spirits after a few days of running around in a working car (if only it'd stay that way, eh?) - there's more than enough catharsis in a few good miles of asphalt devouring joy riding to make up for the days and weeks of frustrating repair..

So I bought my 1968 satellite almost two months ago and I've been slowly getting it to inspection ready (passed wife's and state's safety and roadworthiness tests) and just last week had the drive shaft replaced to resolve a horrific vibration problem. Yesterday was my first opportunity to get out on the road and really see how it drives - Yeow! It was SWEET! For the first 20 minutes... While moving to the passing lane and really opening up the throttle (440, 750 holley, 727 tflite) accelerating with no apparent top end in sight when - nothing - engine died, then thick black smoke from under the dash which cleared out pretty quickly.

I coasted to the next exit (which was close enough, thank goodness) and got the car towed to the house where I find:

Thick black smoke seems to have come from - most of the jacket / insulation of a dark blue with white stripe wire connected to the ignition has burned. It has burned from the ignition switch all the way to the wiring block on the firewall - opened the hood and found that the same wire has burned insulation all the way from the engine side of the firewall wiring block to what I think is a resistor (hard to tell, PO painted it black?!?). I pulled up the wiring diagram for the car from mypar.com and it appears that it should run from ignition switch to the alternator, but in tracing, it goes from ignition switch to resistor to alternator (I think - it might be going to coil, I need to re-trace it with the wiring diagram printout next time).

I know, you're asking "the title of this thread doesn't make sense" - so here it is: There are two wires coming from the carburetor electric choke - ground is black wire going back to carb. Red wire goes to a "Y" splitter with two spade connecters that is connected to both sides of the resistor, on the wire that has burned.

I think the Previous Owner has hooked up the electric choke to a circuit that can't handle the extra load and when I was really giving it the gas it overheated that ignition wire and burned the insulation off (interestingly now that it's home and cool the engine fires right up). I googled around a bit and it seems the electric choke can be tapped into "any" circuit that is on when the engine is on, but I only ever see reference to ONE connection - I'll post a pic of this wiring lunacy and see if anyone can offer a guess as to why this is connected the way it is.

Thanks again! I gotta say I like this forum. Just writing this post out helps soothe the feelings I have for a car that sits in the driveway again

 

OK, I should change the title of this thread - a better title would be: which new wiring harness should I buy?

OK, here is a picture of the mess:



1 - Blue/white stripe wire from wire block (to ignition switch on dash)
2 - Blue/white stripe wire crimped onto (1) and connecting to (3)
3 - One end of "Y" cable connecting to Electric Choke
4 - Second end of "Y" cable connecting to Electric Choke
5 - Brown wire from wire block (to ignition switch on dash)
6 - Dk Blue wire crimped onto (5) and connecting to MSD Ignition / Coil
7 - Dk Green wire connecting to Alternator (stator?)
8 - Red wire connecting to Holley Electronic Choke

Wires #1/#2 have burned, crispy insulation.

So it seems that wires #7 and #1/#2 are connected to either end of a resistor (is this the ballast?), and the coil, ignition and electronic choke are all directly connected, but I can make no sense of why there is a "Y" cable there connecting all of this to each other.

More details to follow as I peel this apart and try to make some sense...

 

Well, for anyone following this thread, and for my own note-taking purposes, I'll add the following update:

I have replaced the burned section of wiring (Dk Blue w/white stripe) and I have re-connected all wires as I found them, with the exception of the electric choke (which is currently disconnected). This is the only configuration in which the engine would fire and continue to run without the ammeter gauge swinging wildly from min to max with no apparent rhyme or reason. If I follow the original wiring diagram, there would be a resistor between the Dk Blue-tr / Dk Green (stator) wire and the Brown / Dk Blue wires, but putting that inline caused ammeter to bounce around crazily and engine to run very rough. Could be bad resistor - could be I had the wire pairs on the wrong sides of the resistor - are there "wrong" ends of the resistor?

With the electric choke disconnected, low rpm and idle is rough but giving a little extra gas smooths it right out. Even when the engine is warm, without the electric choke connected it runs pretty roughly - is that normal? I thought the choke was only necessary while the engine was cold / warming up.

So I'm still looking for a good place to hook up the choke - any suggestions?

 

More than likely the problem didn't have to do with the electric choke itself, but with one of the wires grounding out somewhere along the way. If one is laying across a hot spot, or a part where movement eventually eats through the insulation, you'll get burned up wiring. It's a safe bet to add a fusible link to prevent extensive damage. I had a similar problem years ago in one of my cars, a hot wire running along the core support eventually rubbed off the insulation where it passed through toward the battery, the result was a mess of melted wires.

The most likely reason that your car is running roughly is that it was tuned with the choke partially engaged. Now that the choke is disconnected, you are probably running a little lean at idle. You might want to try hooking the electric choke back up with a 20 or 30 amp fuse of fusible link (easy to find at an auto parts store). If the link or fuse blows out when you turn on the ignition, then you'll know the choke was the problem. If not, then the problem probably originated somewhere else.

Double check your other wiring and make sure than it is not touching or rubbing against anything, and invest in some flexible tubing (also sold at auto parts stores) as additional protection.

 

Thanks for the suggestion - I hooked the choke back up with a 20Amp inline fuse as well as re-routing the wiring off the engine (was run across the intake manifold) and will get some flexible tubing installed as well . We'll see what happens next.

So I downloaded the installation sheets for my carb (next I'll go buy the holley tuning book - highly recommended by many) and found that the distributor vacuum advance is connected to the wrong port, there are open vacuum ports and the secondary idle mixture screws are missing.

Blah. Will update on the idle when those things are fixed.

 

Open vacuum ports are a bad thing, they'll cause the engine to run very poorly. Your Holley won't have secondary mixture screws (they are only on the primary side), unless it has had a "4 corner" idle modification done to it (complicated, and usually unnecessary). The secondary metering block will have holes where the screws would go, but the holes are only 1/8" inch deep.