New to Square body.. electrical nightmare...

New to the forum, new to chevy square body's and not the most experienced mechanic. I bought a 1983 C30 to build a classic welding rig out of, its got some problems so I'm sure I'll be here a lot. Starting off, its definitely got some wiring issues, headlights are not working, only the running lights, and when I turn on the headlight switch, the aftermarket sound system dies!! There was a bunch of lights on the running boards that I removed that had snipped wires and a real ****** wiring job. The electric choke is not working (the carb is a holley so presumably not stock) it seems like there is a lot of wiring work to be done and aside from motorcycles which are far simpler I don't have experience in this. So I guess my question is, should I start attacking the problems one by one, pay to have the truck completely re-wired (what does that cost) or attempt to start the wiring from scratch by myself?

Find a schematic for your 83 truck and t-shoot one circuit at a time, if you can.

You will need a very good understanding of automotive electrical systems to do a rewire yourself. The exception might be an AAW kit specifically designed for your truck. You can find it cheaper on the Internet, but it's still expensive.

https://www.americanautowire.com/view-product/1983-87-chevygmc-truck-classic-update-kit/

Do not even think about using a universal kit. I have lots of experience with automotive wiring, and it probably took me 60 man hours and several mods to wire my 82 C10 with a very nice AAW universal kit.

Mine was hacked during a diesel to gas conversion. I ended up going to a salvage yard and pulled a clean one from a similar truck. Plug and play.

I rewired my k5 but for my next project I will go for a painless or american autowire harness. It took me ~100 hours and the wires and small parts cost nearly the same as a harness.

ali_c20 said:

I rewired my k5 but for my next project I will go for a painless or american autowire harness. It took me ~100 hours and the wires and small parts cost nearly the same as a harness.

Click to expand...

I have to agree.

I'm riding around now with a basic fuseblock and push button starter, and to really start getting relays and wiring everything up.. I'd easily get into it for 250-300 bucks pretty quick.

ali_c20 said:

I rewired my k5 but for my next project I will go for a painless or american autowire harness. It took me ~100 hours and the wires and small parts cost nearly the same as a harness.

Click to expand...

Yeah, my 60-hour estimate was probably low. Spent a couple hours/day off and on for 3 months. There were some things I changed my mind on 1-2 times, like the underhood charging and panel feed wiring. Ended up using 8 gauge SXL (or GXL?) crosslinked wire all the way to the passenger compartment terminal lug, and then 10 gauge wires -- one to the ignition switch and the other to the battery bus.

Heck, just connecting the universal kit wires to the a new instrument panel 20-pin connector probably took me 4-6 hours, much of it determining which wires went where. Can't tell you how many drawings and schematics I used to make sense of it. Seems like it was 10X easier to wire my buddy's 37 Chevy!

AAW fuse panel mounted with spacers to make more room for wires. 8 gauge wire from the ALT/BAT circuit feeding two 10 gauge wires -- one to IGN switch, the other to fuse panel BAT bus. Rust was due to water leak through cracks in the seam sealer below the cowling.



New instrument panel connector (from Ron Francis) and some of the wires installed. A few more wires were added before completion, but my truck doesn't use all 20 connections.

Welcome! When I got my 86, it was a PO wiring nightmare too. Easiest way to sort it out was disconnect the battery and started under the dash removing all the added in, wire nutted, cross jumpered crap and chucking it into a big rats nest next to the truck, kept at it until was down to just the stock wiring left under the hood and dash. Also had to clean up the back wiring at rear bumper since about 3 different trailer harnesses had been hacked in. Went back through and added missing ground wires from engine compartment back, double checked all the stock wiring for breaks or bare spots, then started adding stuff back in the correct way till I had what I wanted.

Welcome to the site.