A-Body Round #2- My '76 Scamp restore...

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Looks like a proverbial "black box" to me! Who are you trying to impress? Judges at a car show? Fellow enthusiasts? Or are you simply trying to create 'functional'? BTW, looks like a Bud Industries enclosure. Am I right??
Just clean/functional is the goal. Not worried about show judges at all as it'd never win anything at one of those anyway.

It is Bud Industries indeed.

Thank for the feedback!
 
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Got all the Sniper harnesses run neatly into the junction box. Made a harness for the distributor and Coil and got it run into the box. Also merged IGN 1 & IGN2 and got them run into the box so I can connect it to the magic pink wire that Holley stresses....

Next will be a harness from the electric fan to the junction box. Then a harness from the junction box to the back of the car to connect to the battery and fuel pump...

Still a long way to go but I feel like I'm closing in on it. My original hope of having it run by Spring has passed obviously... Now hoping to have it running well before July 4 so I can roll in it up to my folks house in OH again this year.

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Amazing job. I did not go through the entire thread but I would love to know the HP a slant six should make with your setup.
 
Well, the time has come to try to see if the Scamp will start. There's a lot of stuff I need to cut out of the factory harness before I rewrap it, but I'm wanting to make sure it runs first. The new Sniper wiring is all in and clean/wrapped. Also just have the vacuum lines temporarily installed and will do a cleaner job on them.

I'm hoping for a good day tomorrow of adding fluids and hopefully getting it to make noise... fingers crossed...

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I fought getting the fuel pump to run most of the day but finally found a bad ground. Once that was fixed, I got it to start. Runs for about 4-5 seconds then stalls, but at least starts. I'm sure it's a timing issue. Battery died so I decided to put it on the charger and give it another shot tomorrow. I consider today a win.
 
Good progress today... plenty more to go.... anxious to let the Sniper "learn" to improve the mixture and also get it out of the garage where throttle can be sustained a bit- the quick on/off revs seem to make a hammering noise in the garage as the blowoff valve opens and closes... may end up needing to get the larger 4" pulley instead of 3.5" in order to slow the blower down a bit...

 
Currently waiting on some more Lokar stuff to arrive so I can finish the throttle and kickdown cables... need to get it to the exhaust shop to have them make a modification to the pipe as with the new location it just barely rubs against the tranny linkage... then clean up wiring, hood back on, grill back in, and try to put some miles on it... also doesn't seem the fuel gage is working with the new tank so will need to figure that out... still lots to do, but today was a good day.
 
You could paint some silver stripes on your junction box, and it'd match your valve cover.
 
Cut all the now unused wires out of the factory harness, rewrapped it with the non-adhesive vinyl like original, and reinstalled. I believe engine bay wiring is now complete.

Hope to get the grill and lights back in tomorrow night.

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Grill and lights back in. Lights are functional after half a day of troubleshooting. As part of this project I put in one of crackedback's headlight relay kits... Lights were acting dumb with things like the turn signal swith changing them between bright and dim, turn signal indicators on the dash would stay on any time the headlights were on and not flash, headlights were running when it should've only been marker Lights, etc... After a bunch of head scratching and cussing, i started to pull the stuff back out to just start over tracing every wire... but then once I unhooked a ground wire inside the engine bay, the headlights started working right... Hmmm.... Never experienced this before but I was using a bolt through the plastic tab on the relay to hold the relay to the radiator support panel. The back of that bolt in the engine bay was an ideal spot to put the ground ring from the wiring harness for the front marker light circuit, but apparently that is unacceptable. Ended up using that bolt for the ground ring and moved the relays about an inch away and Drilled a new hole for an individual bolt, and it works perfect. No idea why the relay seemed to care about the bolt running through its plastic tab having a ground wire attached. Weird. Nothing wrong with the headlight relay kit at all, but I sure was lost there for a bit.

Anyway, hood is also back on. Appears I've got some minor interference between the carb hat/boost sleeve and the hood stiffener- hopefully trimming a little of the hood stiffener out solves it.

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Grill and lights back in. Lights are functional after half a day of troubleshooting. As part of this project I put in one of crackedback's headlight relay kits... Lights were acting dumb with things like the turn signal swith changing them between bright and dim, turn signal indicators on the dash would stay on any time the headlights were on and not flash, headlights were running when it should've only been marker Lights, etc... After a bunch of head scratching and cussing, i started to pull the stuff back out to just start over tracing every wire... but then once I unhooked a ground wire inside the engine bay, the headlights started working right... Hmmm.... Never experienced this before but I was using a bolt through the plastic tab on the relay to hold the relay to the radiator support panel. The back of that bolt in the engine bay was an ideal spot to put the ground ring from the wiring harness for the front marker light circuit, but apparently that is unacceptable. Ended up using that bolt for the ground ring and moved the relays about an inch away and Drilled a new hole for an individual bolt, and it works perfect. No idea why the relay seemed to care about the bolt running through its plastic tab having a ground wire attached. Weird. Nothing wrong with the headlight relay kit at all, but I sure was lost there for a bit.

Anyway, hood is also back on. Appears I've got some minor interference between the carb hat/boost sleeve and the hood stiffener- hopefully trimming a little of the hood stiffener out solves it.

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Best guess, the ground wasn’t really grounded because the plastic relay was insulating it on that side. So the power was back feeding through the other circuits.

I had something similar happen when I added relays.
 
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Throttle and kickdown cables installed. Need to adjust the kickdown yet but will have to wait for my son to get back here and help on Saturday.

Vacuum lines permanently installed now.

Tomorrow I'll trim the hood support and hopefully get the carpet reinstalled. Then make the boy help me wrestle the seats back in on Saturday as well.

Hopefully early next week can get it in the exhaust shop for the small modification I need them to do.

So stoked.
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Best guess, the ground wasn’t really grounded because the plastic relay was insulating it on that side. So the power was back feeding through the other circuits.

I had something similar happen when I added relays.

And now the same issue is back. Headlights work fine if the turn signal/front marker light ground is unhooked. As soon as I connect the ground for the marker Lights the headlights stop working.

Even tried running an isolated ground wire from the front marker light wire all the way back to the battery in the trunk as a test and same results. Confused. Maybe I have a broken wire crossing somewhere inside the rewrapped harness? Not sure what to do now except get new sockets for the marker lights/front turn signals and rebuild that portion of the harness.

Guess I'll keep moving on other stuff and add this to my list once I've been able to think on it some more.
 
And now the same issue is back. Headlights work fine if the turn signal/front marker light ground is unhooked. As soon as I connect the ground for the marker Lights the headlights stop working.

Even tried running an isolated ground wire from the front marker light wire all the way back to the battery in the trunk as a test and same results. Confused. Maybe I have a broken wire crossing somewhere inside the rewrapped harness? Not sure what to do now except get new sockets for the marker lights/front turn signals and rebuild that portion of the harness.

Guess I'll keep moving on other stuff and add this to my list once I've been able to think on it some more.

I would go back to that ground screw and make sure it is making a good connection. Sounds like maybe it isn't getting a good ground so it has to back feed. But there are people way much smarter than I on this.

Maybe @slantsixdan?
 
I would go back to that ground screw and make sure it is making a good connection. Sounds like maybe it isn't getting a good ground so it has to back feed. But there are people way much smarter than I on this.

Maybe @slantsixdan?

Thanks. Kinda was my thought too so an intermediate step I made was connecting the ground to the inner fender instead of the radiator support plate thinking getting it farther away from the headlight relay kit relay would help. No dice. Then went with the attempt of running the ground all the way back to the trunk terminal. Still no dice. I'm sure it will end up being something stupid, but argh!
 
I would go back to that ground screw and make sure it is making a good connection. Sounds like maybe it isn't getting a good ground so it has to back feed. But there are people way much smarter than I on this.

Maybe @slantsixdan?

I don't wanna get prematurely excited, but think I might have figured it out. I was looking at my Haynes manual and noticed that they show all the grounds for the front lights coming back to a single common point.

So I took some scrap wire and clamps and grew the wires on each of the ends of the headlight relay kit long enough to reach that single bolt I was using for grounding the marker Lights, and it works! At least for now...

Now I'm going to need to grow the wires for real so that they can be hooked up permanently and hopefully it still works after that....

Apparently being grounded isn't good enough- they all must need grounded on the same screw.

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Spent today installing gauges. Got a tach, oil pressure, volt meter, and boost now.

Also got the carpet and seats back in.

Tomorrow I need to do the headlight wiring modifications which will hopefully 100% fix the lighting issue I've been experiencing.

Halfway confident that the first test drive will be tomorrow!

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Did the first drive to the gas station and O'Reilly for more tranny fluid. It made it!

Didn't push it at all bit can definitely feel more power. Only went to about 2.5 psi of boost before I let off.

Manual steering is going to take some getting used to- Never had a car with that before.

Overall, super excited!
 
Does using this black enclosure to hide a bunch of Sniper wiring connections look too hokey? I'm not finding a better way to hide them and doing it under dash is not very desirable from a servicing standpoint. Of course I need to make a mount plate so it's not just 2 screws holding it to the fender, but just making sure my hillbilly isn't showing too much before I make it more permanent.

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Looks good, glad it's not chrome personally.
 
Spent today installing gauges. Got a tach, oil pressure, volt meter, and boost now.

Also got the carpet and seats back in.

Tomorrow I need to do the headlight wiring modifications which will hopefully 100% fix the lighting issue I've been experiencing.

Halfway confident that the first test drive will be tomorrow!

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looks good , good work on everything
 
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