Well I was thinking of going with a toyota and building another buggy out of it, but then I got to thinking about setting up an old chevy 350 with sm420 and a couple of toy cases behind it. How hard is it to do wiring? Are there books out there for setting up such a simple system? I would need lights for night wheelin' but that's about it. Any body got a direction? Thanks

What about using some sort of dune buggy wiring harness. Im sure an old carbed 350 cant be much harder the wiring a VW motor. They run the basic lights as well. Just an idea.

Matt

how many gizmo's do you need? wipers? signals? brake lights? the engine wiring itself is simple, hot wire to the distributor and it will run, switched feed to the alternator to get it started and you are done the engine part.

The only thing I need is to be able to turn it on, like with a pushbuttom starter rather than key cylinder and I also need lights so I can see where I am going at night when rockcrawling. No wipers, brake lights, turn signals, etc.

Originally posted by coiled
The only thing I need is to be able to turn it on, like with a pushbuttom starter rather than key cylinder and I also need lights so I can see where I am going at night when rockcrawling. No wipers, brake lights, turn signals, etc.

The push-button is a piece of cake. Essentially, you're just "jumping" the starter. Power to the starter & you wire the solenoid to the starter with your button in between.

BTW, for working under the hood, a hand-held starter button is really handy. Use alligator clips to hook it to the solenoid & the starter & long wires so you can stand in front of the truck to "bump" the engine over (just gotta make sure your ignition is off so you don't START it).

TEX

it always starts out simple and turns in a cluster fawk :D

Get a 1 wire gm alternator (or convert a std. one) and you can avoid the switch to the alternator...
10 or 12 ga. wire from the starter term. to the alt. , then to a master switch, then a 16 ga. to the push botton and coil, then one from the push button to the small terminal on the solenoid...I think that is all you need...

btw...my MG Midget has a starter button built into the fender mtd. solenoid... : )

Originally posted by camo
it always starts out simple and turns in a cluster fawk :D

man, aint that the truth ...

- jack

Originally posted by camo
it always starts out simple and turns in a cluster fawk :D Unless your Crash. Then it starts as a rats nest, and ends up a nicely cabled show-n-shine mastepiece. :p

Eric, it is a walk in the park. You can run about 3 wires toy our whole motor. One wire for Distributor, one wire for the Alt, a power wire, and you are pretty much set.

Dimitri

Its probably a good idea to have some sore of key so that when you turn the key off then everything is turnd off.

The absolute best key to use is a battery isolater . So run a big ass wire from the battery to inside the dash to the isolater and then start your wiring from there.

When the smoke is trying to get out of the wiring under the hood its real handy to be able to turn the everything off.

Sam

Originally posted by Strange Rover
Its probably a good idea to have some sore of key so that when you turn the key off then everything is turnd off.


I have a master switch in my Toy rather than a key. You can also run the wire around to the back & put a separate switch there on the OUTSIDE of the rig so someone else can kill power if you roll over or otherwise phuck up.

TEX