Paz8

OK then, find the controler at the back of the car, turn on your headlights or parking lights open the drivers side door, leave the door open, go to the controler and you can hear it running and a relay clicking, if the speaker is connected you should hear a chime sound followed by" lights on". Up front at the radio harness the controler speaker wires are colored Yellow/Red and Yellow/Black these should go to the front left speaker (drivers side). All the other warnings require that the car be moving. Good luck.

From the ign. coil it runs inside the drivers side of the car and through a resistor then a Blue with a white or green stripe to the dash harness, I can't remember the exact locations of the plugs. The voice warning operates through the left front speaker, if someone installed an after market stereo they probably cut it off or screwed it up (fried it) The only alarm that operates with the car standing still is the "lights on alarm" by turning on the lights and opening the drivers side door. The moduel for the voice system is over the pass. side rear wheel well, remove the spare cover it's in there.

The stock digital dash Tach uses a blue wire from the ign. coil that runs through a resistor before going to the dash harness. There is NO speed sensor for the tach, the speed sensor built into the dash is for the speedometer and the VOICE warning system. Tach wire is on the neg. side of the ign. coil.

My 350 SBC has an 8 in. damper pulley, but the damper itself is about 7 in., I took all the pulleys off an 83' Caprice. It's in a ZX so the steering racks not an issue.

Check the heavy ground cable on the battery and make sure it's connected to the neg. terminal on the battery, check that it's grounded good to the chassis and engine block, by grounded good I mean bolted to a CLEAN spot, scape off the paint where it is bolted and clean any oil off it. Check your fuse links (small plastic box by battery)

Your sort of reinventing the wheel here, JTR already sells everything for the ZX conversion, and it is very good quality stuff. The shortie headers work with the rack steering and are made by Sanderson, they have been making headers for a very long time. Long tube headers would be nice if you plan on running your ZX wide open most of the time (drag car) but your going to run into ground clearence issues with full lenght headers on a street car. You also mentioned zero set back engine position a few times, IMO if you have full length custom headers made (I hope you have a fat wallet) the headers may or may not fit with the engine in the set back position which most people opt to do.

The starter relay is called the INHIBITOR on auto trans ZX, all it requires is to grounded through a neutral start sw. and the relay will pick when the keys in the crank position, You reuse the same heavy yellow wire (around 12 gauge) to the SBC starter sol. that the ZX used on it's starter sol., the wire is long enough don't even have to extend it, Don't get much easier than this, why make things hard.I spent alot of time looking over wiring diagrams for the ZX during my swap, all my stuff works including the digital dash. Never found bad wires but did find a few corroded connector plugs, now I spray contact cleaner on all plug and push them together a few times to clean them, haven't had any problems so far, maybe just lucky.

Your better off fixing your wiring unless it's all burned or cut up. Get a factory service manual and check each electrical problem one at a time, that way it's not so overly hard if your not into wiring problems. A few notes about SAFETY: If your ZX has an auto trans DO NOT eliminate the neutral start safety switches, if the trans is left in gear the cars going to take off when the engine starts. Run your elect. fuel pump through an oil pressure sw. so it shuts off if the engine dies, it's not enough just to get the stuff working it needs to be safe also.

Could be alot of things wrong, but without knowing how the car was wired during the SBC swap here are a few things to check. If the car has an auto. trans is the neutral start switch working when the trans is in park position? If someone tried to jump start your old battery did they hook up the jumpers wrong, if so check the fuse links under the hood. Check the heavy cable from the battery to the starter make sure it's tight at the starter. See if the other wire to the starter is connected, this cranks the starter when the key is turned.

The half circle benders are usually for thin wall electrical conduit.

I believe that type of bender is for bending ridgid galvinized electrical pipe, which is a heavy wall but mild steel pipe, used them many times, not very much good for bending anything else.

Spacing the pins farther apart INCREASES the radius of the bend.

The speedo cable is two seperate cables, one short one connected to the back of the guage cluster and the longer one going out to the trans. If you disconnected the short one when working on the dash I think that maybe you didn't reconnect it correctly. Remove the dash panel below the steering wheel (two screws) and you can get at the connection of the two cables, the cable square ends need to line up or it won't work or it will break.

I think GM uses the 4L80 in some of their mid sized trucks (over one ton ).

The 700R4 from 86' on up are good and reasonably priced, the early versions gave the trans a bad rep. I put a B&M shift kit and TV valve and did the single wire torque converter mod and the trans works perfect. It has a very low first gear and easily spins the tires at part throttle, put the pedal to the floor from a dead stop and it just eats up the tires, the shifts are very crisp, at full throttle the second gear shift lays down about ten feet of rubber and the back end of the car gets alittle sideways. It's alot of fun to drive, with 3.54 rear gears the engines spinning around 2000rpm at 60mph, gets better gas mileage than my new 4X4 truck. You got to remember that the trans is pulling a car that weighs about 500 to 800 lbs less than it was designed for.

Micky Thompson once held the world land speed record with a Four Pontiac engine salt flat car.

I'v been driving my 83 ZX for about a month now, lots of fun, carbed 350 and 700R4, 3.54 rear gears. You may want to consider swaping your steering box (it's hard to fit headers with it) for a power rack from an 82 or 83 ZX, use JTR engine mounts, and hammer out the trans tunnel alittle. Don't think that you can just drop in the engine once and be good, had mine in and out 3 times to "adjust" the trans tunnel, welcome to the site.

I am NOT trying to tell you what to do but, you need to set the engine and trans in the car first, reguardless of set back postion it needs to be offset to the pass, side 3/4 in. so the engine and trans are in line with the differental (rear) which is 3/4 in. offset. When that is done you can try a different set of headers or cast iron manifolds, I doubt if the truck headers will fit, on the pass. side they will dump onto your starter and /or hit the inside of the frame rail. The JTR mounts the engine lower, you may have hood clearence issues with the carb and air cleaner.

Your going to have to bolt that steering shaft together to try to fit the engine header combination into the car, engine won't be much good if you can't steer the car, and NO I would not try to move the steering shaft or modify it unless your feeling lucky.

I reused the ZX temp and oil press. senders from the old L6 engine and adapted them onto the SBC, my 83 also has a digital dash and they work fine with the V8. My speedo is cable driven but digital and I redid the ZX trans end of the cable to fit the GM gear housing, it works fine also. The tach is a different story, I did find and adjustment at the rear of the dash cluster but it is impossible to see or reach with it installed in the car. You would have to remove the steering wheel and pull the instrument cluster out and try to adjust the tach with the engine running, I has in a hurry to finish up and installed a Sun tach on the dash and disconnected the other one. Hope this helps some.

If you mean the front sway bar yes the balancer clears by a mile, did you try an exhaust manifold off of a chevy caprice, it dumps straight down between # 5 and 7 cylinders, it may clear the steering shaft with the engine zero set back.

JTR sells block hugger headers for the ZX conversion with a power RACK steering, I used them on my 83 ZX conversion fit perfect in the set back position, I used a 85 Camaro rad. and upper mount/shroud with 7 blade declutch engine fan and have zero cooling problems. I'v been driving the car for a month now and it's really a sweet ride, PM me if I can help you out.

I bought a mini geared starter from JEGS about $120, works great, weighs about ten pounds less than a heavy duty Chevy unit, fits both 153 and 168 tooth flex plate/flywheels. My battery is mounted in the spare tire well so I needed a good starter.

I think the firewall will end up being were the front seats are now and you'll be a "back seat driver". Should be pretty cool looking in the front windows and seeing a SBC sitting there. Gotta love f**king with peoples minds.

How cold is it where you are ? In the dead of winter the average daily low temp here is 20 deg. the high around 32 deg. I have used 10W-30 for ever and never had an oil related engine problem. The trick is to stick with the same brand name oil all the time. No one here other than a few diesel owners use block heaters and then only during very cold weather. If you you have a carb SBC just make sure the choke and fast idle is set up, I set mine at 1000 rpm at full choke. Start the engine and let it fast idle, if you have to rev the engine to keep it running it's hard on the piston skirts because of the reduced clearence (piston slap).