l' am having electrical issues with my '73 Camaro
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Car has new engine, new battery, new cables, new starter, etc... The car has approximately 1,000-miles. I went to start Camaro the other day, ran for about 5-sec. before engine quit. I tried to start car again and had no electrical power at all, not even a dome light. So I started problem searching to begin with the battery (tested good) and thought the engine electrical and found nothing. All the cables look good and have clean tight connections with no blown fuses. I starting to think that it is the ignition switch malfunction so I got a new ignition switch and car still fails to start. Got under the car to see the the connections were tight on the starter. I got a push-button ignition starter switch which is hooked to the starter. I put a wire on the starter which is hooked to the wire that goes to the electronic distributor and the car starts, however, no electrical power from ignition switch to the electronic distributor. Car fails to start with ignition switch. I am at a loss as to what to check next, therefore, I need help from any mechanic who is willing to share their car engine knowledge with me. Please give me guidance.
Thanks. Randall

 

don't know much about 2nd gens but here is a link to wiring diagrams. may be a fusable link is bad. https://www.nastyz28.com/2gcog/wiring.html

 

Just a wild guess, which I do not like to do. Check your main fire wall connector just below your master cylinder. There are tabs that on the connector that become brittle with age. Once they break off the connector can back off enough to disconnect anything or everything to the engine bay.

On older cars if you lose power under load (like your dome lite showed) its almost always a connection. Could be power could be ground. Normally when a car comes in and they say If I try to start it I lose lights and radio, many times it is just a bad ground connection or cable.

Other than that following the circuits should lead you right to the problem. There is not much that is complicated on a 73. The trick is to look at only one circuit at a time. The power to the starter circuit is pretty simple and so is the power to the distributer. Unlike modern cars these systems are not all tied together. They may be in the same harness and share a ground but in the end none of them are much more complicated than a light bulb and a switch.


It is my experience that trying to teach electrical work in a thread like this ends up a waste of time. It is nothing against you, there are just a lot of basic terms that can cause communication problems we end up running in circles.

Maybe some youtube videos on basic electrical diagnoses?

In school they made us diagram each circuit on a see thru page for a car. Then we stacked them on top of each other. If you followed the instructions you ended up with a very complicated looking wiring diagram but it was just made up of a bunch a simple diagrams. The teacher thought this concept was so important we spent a week on it.