When I bought my truck one of the obvious issues was the wiring harness between the alternator and the regulator, as well as the starter solenoid had been hooked up backwards and fried several of the wires. Some of them were missing and some were hooked up wrong.
I was scared to hook up the harness to the battery in the state it was in. After studying the diagram for days and determining the proper path of all of the wires I repaired the bad sections with new wire and replaced the missing fusible links with ATC inline fuses.
I hooked it all up, turned the key and NOTHING. Scratched my head, checked power in a few places, key on primary coil wire had current, check. The entire fuse block was powered, check.
Im thinking neutral safety switch, yup, the column is jacked up and the lever wasn't even moving the switch, They even had it zip tied over to the park position as well as having a bread twisty trying to hold it over
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I jumped the terminal and it fired right up! This was a giant step in getting this bump on the road. You can't hardly drive it if it won't start with the key?
Much to my surprise the ammeter guage was actually showing a little charge! That also surprised me because I assumed that after smoking the wiring harness the alternator or regulator would be ruined as well. I'll post a pic tomorrow of the scar the wiring fiasco left on the battery. But they work.
Just thought Id share and thank you all for your help.
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A shameless plug I need a ignition switch bezel, a driver side lower door rocker moulding, and a steering column if anybody has any extra stuff laying around.