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Hello everyone. I bought my 1975 Corvette a few months back knowing it had sat for several years (3-4). I went through and changed all of the brakes, fluids, cracked fuel lines, etc and when I got it ready to start, nothing happened.
When I crawled under the dash, I found an alarm zip tied to the steering column that was incorrectly installed and butchered the wiring harness. I say incorrectly because none of the attached buttons for the alarm are connected and quite frankly, I'd rather not have to deal with explaining a janky alarm when I sell the car.
Crudely labeled but these are the 4 areas of concern.
How difficult is it going to be to remove this wiring fiasco and return the harness to stock?
I untangled the wires as best I could and it looks like I might be able to remove the crimps and trace it back to the original wires. However, I'm not sure what's factory and what's not.
Obviously this isn't factory because it uses blade fuses.
And then there's this funky brick higher up in the dash near new-ish electrical tape.
In short... how screwed am I? And does anybody have a really good wiring diagram? The one in my shop manual is terrible.
I'm sorry I don't have any specific answers for you BUT - I can tell you from experience to work diligently to remove and restore every bit of the old wiring and get rid of the alarm.
Otherwise, you'll forever be chasing electrical issues -
See if you can find any name on any of the components you can google and possibly get some information or an instruction manual. A few years ago I got lucky and took my car to a local installation place that did alarms, remote starters, heated seat etc. The guy recognized the system and was able to remove it.
The latest problem I had was an old Chapman system, part of the deal was to ground the ignition, I couldn't get it to start either, there were so many taps into different lines that I bought an engine harness and changed out the whole thing.
Good luck, Frank
Last edited by myoriginal77; Jul 2, 2016 at 04:25 PM.
Reason: typo
I will definitely be rewiring it to factory correct. This alarm is probably from the late 1980s because the lack of information leads to me to believe it predates being sold online.
I would take it to an alarm place if I could get the car started.
Was there something attached to the "1" connector, the one with the "keep this side up" label on it?
I'm pretty sure that is the connector to the actual alarm module, it looks very similar to cheap Chinese eBay alarm connector.
The thing zip tied to the column is just a motion sensor.
-All the lines that had a blade fuse are power line, hunt them down to their root and remove them.
-pretty much everything that is spliced onto another existing wire can be removed. In the lot there should be one spliced onto the door ajar circuit, one in the horn relay and maybe one in the flasher circuit.
-The only tricky part it the ignition, because the alarm have been inserted into the circuit rather than added to, either the relay was in the alarm module or it's somewhere around (looks for relay that looks more modern than the rest). You will have to close it. Follow the ignition wire path (use the connector on the lower left of the steering column as a starting point), you will eventually find it.
Make sure you have the wiring diagram, I have mine on a big poster and it really help.
Seems and looks like you have your hands full with that one. I'd just be diligent about removing the bogus alarm and getting the wiring back to original.
One of the best places to go for help is Willcox Corvette, he has a tech help page and has lots of stuff on there...including a wiring diagram for a '75
Removing an incorrectly installed alarm
