75 el camino project.

Yeah, I picked up my car and the PO had the dash pad and some other work done which resulted in a few missing parts. Thanks for the quick response!

I'll have to look but I might still have an extra one, have to dig in my parts bin

That would be awesome! I have been searching for a while for a picture alone! I have all the factory manuals and they are a bit vague sometimes. I’m in Lombard...

cool glad to hear your near by.

found it, when do you want to get it?

Sent a PM.. if you’re close today or tomorrow if you’re around.

Was great meeting you today! The car is absolutely beautiful! Looking forward to seeing it on the road! Thanks again for the bracket!

yea it was good meeting you too. and no problem. glad I could help.

ok, finally got it fired up, did the initial break in...untill it melted the starter wire in the pipe by the header, fixed that issue, and re wired it, alo wrapped it in 1800 degree worthy wrap, well see how it goes. now down to timing it.

Got a quick video of how it sounds coming out of the garage, still gotta tighten up the power steering belt and the steering itself.

https://youtu.be/_OLF6BXVBq4

I have it at 8 degrees at 800 rpm, with the vacuum advance disconnected and plugged. (which side note, there doesn't seem to be any vacuum on that port at idle, wondering if thats normal), got the idle screws at about 2 turns out each, and it only gets about 15 inches of vacuum. I got it so it will at least fire up with only one pump of the gas on turning the key but even after I just shut it off. I know thats not right but its better than what it was, had to pump like mad to get it to fire. watched one video on tuming it with a vacuum gauge and the idle mixture screws. but turning them either way doesn't seem to have much effect, how it runs or the vacuum. any ideas, its a rochester 4 barrel. Im interested in getting this carb to work instead of just buying new one unless this one is just too toast to tune. looking for some input from anyone who knows much about fine tuning these.

also gotta figure out a few electrical things like why the blower fan is always on with the key on no matter what position the hvac slide is in, no dash lights (headlights markers all work) and no radio...other than that most of the other electricals work.

Your Camino sounds great! A few tweaks and it will be road worthy in no time. There has been several discussions here on the forum about using manifold vacuum or ported vacuum for the advance on the distributor. I have the vacuum line hooked up to manifold vacuum on my 75 Laguna and it runs great. Another thing to consider is your camshaft. I think many aftermarket cams need a slightly different timing setting than a stock cam. There are a lot of good YouTube videos that discuss this that might shed some light on it. Great to see your project out of the garage. Looking good!

Nice work! Sounds and looks great.

riddick75 wrote:
also gotta figure out a few electrical things like why the blower fan is always on with the key on no matter what position the hvac slide is in, no dash lights (headlights markers all work) and no radio...other than that most of the other electricals work.

Blower fan is working normal.

mcarlo77 wrote:
"A" Series Controls - "The blower fan lever is located at the left hand side of the control assembly. The blower motor will operate as soon as the ignition switch is turned to the RUN position (providing the temperature at the engine thermal switch is at least 35*C (95*F). The control has three positions only; LO, MED, HI. There is no OFF position".

The OFF position I believe you are referring to is to regulate which air doors are utilized. Again, according to the manual "The position of these air doors determines if output air flow is from the heater purge outlet at OFF, the heater outlet with slight air flow from defroster nozzles at HEATER, A/C outlets at VENT, A/C outlet only MAX & NORM, heater, A/C and defroster outlets at Bi-LEVEL, or the deforster nozzles with slight air flow from the heater outlet at DEF". https://www.g3gm.com/t3767-1977-malibu-blower-motor-won-t-stop

I don't remember what wire runs to the dash harness to power the dash lights. I would test that wire to make sure theres power. The radio power wire is yellow under the dash. Make the fuse is not blown and the wire is getting power. If it has power, there might be something is wrong with the radio, assuming its factory. I use the yellow as my switched power wire for my aftermarket headunit.

https://imgur.com/a/QT5V0Lj?nc=1

My blower wire is yellow, it was melted behind the manifold. It was routed to a thermal switch in the head that was in the original motor. I cut it down and ran it direct to the relay on the box next to the thermal couple. The dash power is a tan wire I think? Sounds great!! There is an article somewhere about GM recalling the cars since it was proven the blower motor was causing people to zone/sleep on long runs causing them to crash. Sorry if that was already mentioned.. recovering and not feeling well and, well, feeling a bit lazy!

Hawk03 wrote:Nice work! Sounds and looks great.

riddick75 wrote:
also gotta figure out a few electrical things like why the blower fan is always on with the key on no matter what position the hvac slide is in, no dash lights (headlights markers all work) and no radio...other than that most of the other electricals work.

Blower fan is working normal.

mcarlo77 wrote:
"A" Series Controls - "The blower fan lever is located at the left hand side of the control assembly. The blower motor will operate as soon as the ignition switch is turned to the RUN position (providing the temperature at the engine thermal switch is at least 35*C (95*F). The control has three positions only; LO, MED, HI. There is no OFF position".

The OFF position I believe you are referring to is to regulate which air doors are utilized. Again, according to the manual "The position of these air doors determines if output air flow is from the heater purge outlet at OFF, the heater outlet with slight air flow from defroster nozzles at HEATER, A/C outlets at VENT, A/C outlet only MAX & NORM, heater, A/C and defroster outlets at Bi-LEVEL, or the deforster nozzles with slight air flow from the heater outlet at DEF". https://www.g3gm.com/t3767-1977-malibu-blower-motor-won-t-stop

I don't remember what wire runs to the dash harness to power the dash lights. I would test that wire to make sure theres power. The radio power wire is yellow under the dash. Make the fuse is not blown and the wire is getting power. If it has power, there might be something is wrong with the radio, assuming its factory. I use the yellow as my switched power wire for my aftermarket headunit.

https://imgur.com/a/QT5V0Lj?nc=1

its good to hear about the blower fan, I would have been hitting my head against the wall trying to figure it out, the 86 gmc truck I had was able to turn off and I assumed this would do the same, they must have wired it different to fix that recall. and the cam is different, I gotta find the cam paperwork with the specs and figure out what I'll have to do different. but in the mean time I'll look into the dash lights and the radio.

Do your turn signal indicators work on the dash? If not, are the wires getting power at the harmonica harness on the steering column? To test mine, I used a test light to test the blue and light blue wires which are for the front right and left turn signal wires. I think the indicators on the dash receive signals from those wires. If everything has power, it could be a simple fix of the dash harness is not connecting with the cluster. It can be tricky trying to plug the cluster into the dash harness. Mine has popped out a couples time when I tried reinstalling it. The circuit board is bad on the cluster could be bad too.

I have always had good luck with using manifold vacuum for the vacuum advance. I have also seen and read arguments for using ported vacuum that make sense also. My personal experience is to advocate for using manifold vacuum because it gives you better idle tuning capability and idle vacuum.

When you get the car on the road, there is another method you can try that may lead you to need to adjust other parts of the timing curve. This is somewhat of a rabbit hole, but I am a believer in that the most critical tuning element is the getting the timing curve right for the engine.

1) Set the total advance first. This is done easiest by using the lightest springs you can so you don't have to rev the engine so high, and without vacuum advance connected. SBC's generally perform best in the 32-36 degree range.

2) The base timing will be whatever it is after setting the total, but using the stiffest springs in the distributor, you can easily adjust total without revving it up from this baseline. Adjust the timing for best wide open throttle performance. There are two parts to this, advance rate and total. I like to use the lightest springs, but this is something you can sneak up on by swapping one at a time to get the rate that suits your engine best. Once you get total timing set to best performance, sometimes the initial is advanced enough to have a slight kickback on the starter. You can either back it down enough for easy cranking, or get a centerplate and weight set that gives you more degrees of advance. Most weights give you 20 degrees. Depending on your cam, you may need less or more than this. This is probably where most people will stop and just back off the timing a bit, but if you want to proceed, the information is out there.

3) Once you get the best performance for wide open throttle, you might find the vacuum advance is too much for light load cruising. You may have to limit the travel of the vacuum advance. Most stock canisters have 20 degrees worth of travel. There are various ways to accomplish this with some requiring you to adjust your base timing back to where it was.

4) This may seem like a lot and it can take a weekend or two to get it sorted, but once it is I swear you will have people asking you what kind of fuel injection system you are using.

Hawk03 wrote:Do your turn signal indicators work on the dash? If not, are the wires getting power at the harmonica harness on the steering column? To test mine, I used a test light to test the blue and light blue wires which are for the front right and left turn signal wires. I think the indicators on the dash receive signals from those wires. If everything has power, it could be a simple fix of the dash harness is not connecting with the cluster. It can be tricky trying to plug the cluster into the dash harness. Mine has popped out a couples time when I tried reinstalling it. The circuit board is bad on the cluster could be bad too.

the turn inicators and the head light indicator work. just no illumination. even the idiot lights work for the generator and oil.

Its likely the printed circuit board. I had the same issue and fixed it by replacing it.

riddick75 wrote:

Hawk03 wrote:Do your turn signal indicators work on the dash? If not, are the wires getting power at the harmonica harness on the steering column? To test mine, I used a test light to test the blue and light blue wires which are for the front right and left turn signal wires. I think the indicators on the dash receive signals from those wires. If everything has power, it could be a simple fix of the dash harness is not connecting with the cluster. It can be tricky trying to plug the cluster into the dash harness. Mine has popped out a couples time when I tried reinstalling it. The circuit board is bad on the cluster could be bad too.

the turn inicators and the head light indicator work. just no illumination. even the idiot lights work for the generator and oil.

Another possibility is the headlight switch/circuit. Try rotating the headlight switch fully counter-clockwise and see if the dome light comes on. That might get you pointed in the right direction. If it ends up being the connection on the printed circuit on the back of the gauge cluster, try using a pencil eraser on each of the contacts. I've corrected a lot of using that method. Good luck!

I gave you a Street Cred for your use of the pencil eraser.

REVINKEVIN wrote:I gave you a Street Cred for your use of the pencil eraser.

Ha! I know this cause I made a lot of mistakes in school and was real handy with the back end of that writing utensil.

got dash lights back, changed out the headlight switch after doing some testing. thanks for the idea g3chevy. saved a whole lot of time not having to tear out the cluster. also got the radio working. the stereo Im running I thought just needed the other wire for memory of the pre sets and clock but it apparently needed it to power up the unit as well. been to cold and too busy with work to get to fine tuning the carb but next week is a little warmer so I might mess with it then.

Glad to hear you're making good progress. Looks like you're almost to the finish line with your project.

started working on the hood, final major piece to make it look like a complete car. remembered the previous guy took stock out in bondo so decided to take it all the way down to metal to see what he did and yup, excessive amounts of unneeded filler.





also started looking into the electric choke. thought the wire that was attached originally was for it, but there is no power on key on engine off, when should it see power? and if this isnt it what should it go to? its a green wire that is coming off of a flat 2 in 2 out connector all green wires, other side goes to the compressor. ill try and get some pictures later but mostly asking right now when should the electric choke see power.

'75 would have used the hot-air style choke, Electric starting showing up around '79~'80. The wire you are seeing most likely went to a fast idle solenoid that would kick the idle up when the A/C went on, to offset the drag of the compressor. See if it has power when the A/C compressor turns on.

Really nice feature to have with a high performance cam.

73ss wrote:'75 would have used the hot-air style choke, Electric starting showing up around '79~'80. The wire you are seeing most likely went to a fast idle solenoid that would kick the idle up when the A/C went on, to offset the drag of the compressor. See if it has power when the A/C compressor turns on.

Really nice feature to have with a high performance cam.

ok that makes sense, ill have to try that, is the fast idle solenoid the same as the idle stop solenoid? I think the wire harness Im using
is from the 77, would that have electric choke, if so i think I switched the wires, right now the one I have on the idle stop solenoid has power at key on, if it didn't then I have a random wire that has key on power that I don't know where it goes. guess Ill have to hit the wire diagrams again.