help hooking up wiring - 1979 100hp

[Steve Mahler]

i have a new to me 79ish chrysler 100hp - electronic ignition. The motor is exceptionally clean, ran well per last owner, and I manually turned over the engine to verify good compression on all holes.

So now I am hooking up the wiring harness and battery cables. The harness was easy since color coded to the key switch. done. however, I am a moron and I cant find the manual I ordered, so I am unsure where to connect the cables (pos and neg) from the battery. My guess is the neg goes to an unused bolt into the block; and the positive goes to the first post (towards the transom) on the solenoid. But the best I could get was a faint click of the electric choke.

I did jump with cables direct to the starter and it turned over....

Any help for a wiring newbie? I hate to take this in and run up a huge bill at the shop.

 

[rodsailor]

Re: help hooking up wiring - 1979 100hp

On my 1988 85hp, the ground point from the battery is a bolt that screws into the block on the port side, just below and pretty well covered up by the starter. My trim/tilt relays also are ground there, and when I tried to use another random ground point, I just about cooked the ground wire from the terminal strip.

Rod

 

[Steve Mahler]

Re: help hooking up wiring - 1979 100hp

thanks for the help, I think I am OK on the neg cable- can you confirm where the postive cable should go?

 

[rodsailor]

Re: help hooking up wiring - 1979 100hp

Steve,

I can't say positively, but all of the diagrams in my Seloc manual, plus every car and motorcycle I ever worked on, had the hot lead (positve) from the battery going to the starter solenoid. You should have a large diameter red wire going from one post on the solenoid to the starter. The other large post, generally located towards the front of the motor, is where you hook up the battery positive. There may, although I am not sure with a motor of your year, be another ring terminal with a yellow wire on it that goes to the same post.

Once you have it all hooked up, try your switch key to see if it cranks. If it doesn't, try shorting between the two large posts of the starter solenoid with an appropriate piece of metal (as a note, do not use your pocket knife, as the amperage will eat up the blade in a heartbeat). If the motor turns when the solenoid is shorted, but not with the key, you may have a bad ignition switch, but most likely the wire between the switch and the starter solenoid is poorly terminated or some of the strands are broken, adding too much voltage drop in the wire to fire the solenoid. This happens a lot in cars, especially Volkswagens, Porsches, and Mercedes.

Rodsailor