It’s alive!
Wow… I must say, I never thought the sound of an engine starting would cause me so much happiness. Today, finally, after many months and several failed attempts, The Beast awoke.
The nearly catastrophic fire back on December 28th, 2005, destroyed most of the wiring harness under the hood of my truck. Thanks to Shades (Matt Levene) for the replacement wiring harness. I’d installed most of it months ago, but got stuck when I broke the bolt off in my tranny that holds the kickdown cable in place. Because I’m moving a week from today, it was imperative that I got the truck running this weekend. I have to have the tranny rebuilt, and hope to have it towed to the shop this coming Monday, the 22nd.
After replacing about everything in the distributor, it wouldn’t spark worth a damn. Connecting a screwdriver to a plug wire and holding it against ground gave very little spark. I received a used distributor in the mail that including some useful parts. I only ended up using the ignition module though. I installed it using a Chevy-approved modification to simplify things. It should result in an overall better-running truck.
Turns out, my attempts to get it running this past week were utterly futile, as I’d unfortunately left out a crucial part. There is a tiny wire that runs from the ignition coil (in the distributor) to a connector. Without getting technical, I’ll say that without it, the truck won’t run, and in the process, the ignition module will get fried. Well, I think it’s pretty safe to say that I fried 3 ignition modules.
So the wire was properly installed. I didn’t have that little wire, no idea where the original one went either. It came with my new ignition coil, which probably wasn’t needed 
The shitty part is, that new coil ($70) was unreturnable once the package was opened. Oh well, now I have a “performance” ignition coil, LOL.
So anyway, I crawled into the driver’s seat, as I had so many times in the last 2 weeks, and tried to start it up. Much to my surprised, it took a deep breath and shot out a huge plume of smoke from the tailpipe. It didn’t want to run, but I feathered the gas pedal until it was able to maintain an idle. I got out and adjusted the timing a bit to get it running a little better.
So I’ve cut it off, and I’m waiting on the engine, as well as the outside temperature to cool off some before I head out to clean up and secure the wiring under the hood.
Monday, (provided I get it running well enough) it’ll be towed to the tranny shop. They’ll drill out and re-tap the hole for the tranny kickdown cable, and while they have it open, change the speedo gear for the 3.73 gears I had installed when the rear end was rebuilt.
It’s been a long road, but I can finally see the end in sight.
Thanks to everyone for all the help in getting it up and running again.
~jp