This appears to be a resister of some sort, but I can't figure it out.

It is spliced into the yellow and white wires going to the plug to the engine as shown.

I suspect it is some sort of static eliminator for the Fosgate stereo that previous owner put in, but not sure. Not even sure if this fosgate works.

Any ideas what this is?

 

Its a capacitor for the radio

 

That is what I thought.

The amp the PO tried to put in appears incomplete. I don't believe the FOSGATE is functional. The three connections on the left should be for remote power, ground and battery power. None of that is connected.

There is a spaghetti jungle of wire behind what seems to be a pretty nice Retro Radio.

I was able to download the Fosgate owners manual, and now I'm going to do a search on this RR and try and make sense of this mess.

 

Yes that is a factory installed Capistor.
It's done, remove it.
Those are orange wires and part of the courtesy circuit, they are hot at all times.
You may also find another cap bridging the turn signal flasher relay...

 

It seems odd to me that the factory would use those cheesy blue splice connectors.

So, to be clear, my car is still stock and running points (LS4), should I just remove this capacitor? Is it even needed?

 

Being you have a 74, it may be a Dealer installed cap.
It is your call on removing them. By the looks of it is leaking and decomposing as we type...
But yes those scotch locks are what was used.
Here are both that were factory installed on my 77.
I need to make a correction, the orange wires are your Stop/Hazard circuit not the CTSY, but still hot at all times.

And shows in the circuit...

 

While you have it apart anyway, consider eliminating the anachronistic radio, and powering that amp with a hidden Bluetooth head unit.

Something like this Bluetooth headphone amp and a headphone to RCA splitter might be sufficient. There are lots of other choices at Amazon.

 

I want to thank you for all the info. I took the capacitor out this morning. Wow, what an antique.

It is Marked: MQT 195m ,47 MFD, 200 V.D.C It is covered in wax and is kind of disgusting.

To replace this would take a new one about the size of a pea.

After an exhaustive search I found another thread that supports you totally.

https://www.vettemod.com/threads/what-is-this.10958/

 

It is kind of ironic that I started this whole project to simply fix the clock. As luck would have it, while at Corvettes at Carlisle this year, I ended up at one of the instrument rebuilding vendors (Corvette Clocks) who made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I ended up with ALL instruments completely rebuilt for not much more than the cost of fixing the clock alone!!!!

To make a long story longer, and one which I know many on this forum can relate to, one thing led to another to another etc etc. Carb sent to Lars, wiring and vacuum lines repaired while waiting on instruments, dash disassembled, old gauges sent off.

So, the radio! Oh yeah....that too!!! Looks like previous owner never completed installation. None of power connectors for the amp or radio are installed. He apparently was trying to use the radio mic plug for a phone as he ran a wire for that and the speakers.

Based on your recommendation, I started doing some research. Your suggestion is an incredibly good one.

This retro radio has an AUX input which I believe I can use to attach a blue tooth receiver to. If so, I will be able to use my phone for everything without being wired to the radio at all. Great suggestion.

 

Factor installed noise suppressing capacitor. Cheesy? Yes. But, functional. I suspect it was and after-thought from the original wiring design, so it was "patchwork" system until the next model year. Or, if it was a cheap enough fix, GM probably kept it that way.....

 

Did you make any progress with your amp/radio project? Documented solutions are always a great help on this Forum.

I bypassed the radio and ran a similar amp from an MP3 player years ago in a different classic car, using an RCA splitter like this one. If I ever find that amp again, I'll try it with the microphone amp I linked above.

With wireless (Qi) phone charging, and a Bluetooth connection to the pre-amp, you should avoid any alternator/ground loop whine.

 

Yes, I did get this resolved, and it was actually very easy. The PO had the constant power run with a huge overkill cable direct to the battery. Of course this did not turn on the amp when the radio was turned on. A Blue switched wire from the radio was meant for the amp remote. This is what turned on the amp when the radio was turned on.

In the Fosgate picture below, the connections from left are Gnd, REM, B+. The B+ goes directly to the battery. The wires run up from underneath the amp.

The speaker wires are pretty straightforward. You can download the Fosgate amp owners/installation manual from the web. It's a really good amp. Mine is from 2015 and still sounds and works great. PO installed some really nice heavy duty, but small speaker boxes in the rear, and updated the two front speakers to handle the power. Very nice actually.

The big problem with my car was how the radio was wired. It made absolutely no sense, and all I did was cut out the big ball of wire that was black taped to the top of the steering column.

The PO had spllced all these wires together with four different fuses, the two fuses together are 40 AMP!!! He had them all spliced to the electric power windows and plugged into the IGN connection (center terminal) on the fuse box.

All I did was run the power windows (pink/black) to the IGN switch as the wiring diagram shows, I put the constant from the radio (Yesllow) on the BAT terminal (top ne in the center), and the switched one (Red and hard to see in the picture) to ACC as the radio wiring diagram recommended.

There was no need to add any fuses, connections or anything as the radio comes with the correct fuse already installed in the wiring harness.

The Retro Radio I have is VERY nice in my opinion. It isn't made anymore, unfortunately, but they have many others with loads of features. Mine has Bluetooth, 3 FM bands, 2 AM, USB input, two AUX inputs, and I MIC input, clock and more. I can make hands free calls, listen to Spotify, the radio, and even use internet navigation. It fulfills all my needs and can run extremely LOUD if I so desire. It actually works better than the system in my C6. Much less cluttered.