I got a 79 l82 in a trade, never had a corvette, it is a basket case and I am trying to piece it back together. The old carb is long gone, it had an edelbrock 750 on it and I swapped it out for a holley 650. I swapped the headlight vacuum for electric ones. I want to keep the hvac on vacuum as I have it all cleaned up and the bellows work and I have a new line kit and controls going in. But everything under the hood is hacked. There are some random connections on the intake and thermostat housing. What are they? There is a button that looks like it is for the hood for some reason and the wires to it are trashed. I pulled all the vacuum lines from the charcoal canister, do I need to plug those up, or stick it on vacuum, or just ignore it? I need a clear diagram or pics of how the HVAC under vacuum routing AND the wiring goes. I would like to try and get the ac at least tested(Im sure it leaks but it would be nice to at least fill it with UV dye to see where and hopefully fix it with some orings). And the windshield wipers... they will not run off. I swapped in a new motor but it was not hooked up at all when I got it so I plugged in the three wire connector AND the red wire from the cover, and if I connect the ground wire they shut off, unplugged from ground they won't shut off. Knowing what is going on there would be nice. Thanks everyone.

 

Best advice is to buy a 1979 Chevrolet Service Manual, not an off brand. All your questions will be answered. They can be found used on EBay. Also the AIM will give you more details on your specific year. Welcome to the hobby.

 

Sounds like you also need a 1979 Corvette Wiring Diagram, ...
and a vacuum hose diagram.

Lectric Limited Sells 2ft wide poster sized wiring diagrams

 

Here are a couple of vacuum diagrams that should get you going. The connections on the thermostat and intake manifold are the 2 TVS switches.

 

That's for the factory alarm.

 

Okay, so the TVS switches are junk and can go and the holes plugged. Theres no emissions stuff on the car anymore. The same with the charcoal canister, I will leave it and just ignore it. I just need to know what vacuum lines I need to keep. I already have the brake booster to the manifold, I have the distributor to the carb, I have the PCV to the carb. Theres a weird hard vac line from the the back of the intake manifold to somewhere under the car. I have not seen that on any vac diagram.

 

The hard vacuum line will be connected to the auto trans modulator (or should be!)

 

I hope so. I only drove the car once down the block and only got it to like 50mph. Had no power brakes(bad booster), and was GUTLESS, slow as dirt. I checked the timing today, had something like 30 degrees initial timing. I put it at 14 and it only goes to about 31 degrees total. That is a later issue, right now I am working on putting all the little crap back together so I can paint it and put new door/t-top seals in it so I can put the interior back in(it was gross, cover in mouse ****, found snake skins, mouse houses, stank like all hell). But I need to figure out all the climate vacuum nonsense so I can put that all back together.

 

As others have suggested I would start with the AIM for your year. There are some other books/manuals/guides out there as well. Anything you may need to reference on this site can best be searched by using Google. Just always add “C3 Corvette Forum” at the end of your search. As an example, if you wanted to know about the spark plugs for your car, I would google “spark plugs 1979 Corvette L82 C3 Corvette Forum”. You’ll quickly get links to threads on the subject, and as in your thread, others sometimes include other useful links. Here’s the result of the spark plug google search: