I recently had to replace the water pump in my '79 SE when I noticed the battery terminals were all chewy and... Bad. At any rate, as a result I figured it was an apt time to replace them, so I went down to eh... Autozone (Flame on) and they grabbed a couple of off the shelf cables to work for the application specified (SA) Long story short: (Hah, short!) the negative cable was exactly 2 inches too short, and was missing a critical component:

That section of brass(ite?) which grounds against the driver's side wheel well that another anonymous bit of wire loops around. After much duress I settled on using loop terminators to basically Use one section of cable, terminated at the chassis ground point from the engine ground, another from a "looped end adapter" at the battery side to that same chassis ground.

The end result is quite functional, however I'm noticing more irregularities with my Tach (My dis. cap and rotor needed to be replaced in the Reagan Administration-- I'm sure of it) as well as intermittent issues with the Starter: Sometimes I'll key it on, the voltmeter (tach) will show me 16+ amps (settling on 14,) and start like a champ with that strong high-pitched RX-7 starter whine... Other times, I'll key it on and it'll sit right at 12-14, also with a slow fade, but when I key it on it'll sound like a grindy-grumble before it starts up... Or worse yet I'll give the click-of-battery-death... I've been able to start the car by whacking the starter with my socket driver and/or re-tightening the bolts for the Chassis ground, Starter positive and engine negative (all ends of the battery cables)...

Did I poorly engineer a solution? Or may I just need a new starter? Where can I get real human-style battery cables with the proper terminated ends for the fusible link block and the ... grounding solution?

Thanks

 

Victoria British sells the set with correct Neg Cable. Or an OEM one if still available is better, but pricey. I'd get the proper cables swapped in first before doing a lot of other electrical dicking, though changing the dizzy cap, rotor and wires seems obvious anyway. Starter is actually a breeze to remove (2 bolts, but pay attention to how the wires attach!!!) if you want a good auto electrical shop to do a quick (and usually free) bench test to confirm its health...
Stu Aull
80GS
Alaska

 

VB's tech skills are wholly lacking in having an online comprehensive catalog... And my neighbor's dog ate my winter catalog... What's list on the positive and negative cables?

I do need to pick up a drivers side regulator and a window run channel from them anyway!

 

By the way... Does somebody have a list of ground points for the carbed pre-cal emissions RX? I've found two and the Manual doesn't really give the physical locations so much as the connectivity maps?

 

VB Fall catalogue only shows 1 cable (79-85) which goes to the starter + . $10.95

 

Your negative cable solution sounds like it should work, but a new one probably would work better. The voltage regulator sounds like it is having a problem, best choice would be to upgrade to an internally regulated alternator, cleans up the engine bay a bit. Starter should probably be replaced.

Unless the window regulator is slipping, try cleaning and lubing the window mechanism before replacing it.

 

The operant gear has... wallere'd out (technical term) the bearing it's caged in, the 3MM hole that it sits in is now about 2 centimeters wide from years of (prior owners') abuse.

Boo that...

Part number on the Drivers side regulator and price from VB from anyone? And the window run channel too if you're nice?

 

As a a bit of an update, I went over all of the ballast resistors, battery cables... Ground connections etc with a circuit tester and they're all spec...

The auto parts store has 4 starters available for my car, the significant differences being the voltage/amperage they run off of... Anyone have any words of wisdom?