Captain Obvious

Hi Carl, Well I can point you to where the radio is on the wiring diagrams, but because of how badly they're botched (on 72 and 73), I'm not sure if they will provide much useful info. The 74 seems to be OK. On the 72 and 73 diagrams it's a little to the left of dead center of the drawing, below the starter and the fuse block. Also interesting to note that there's different wiring diagrams for US/Canada than the rest of the world. The rest of the world got two speakers and it's all shown. The US and Canada apparently got a radio, but zero speakers. :laugh: On the 74 diagram it's in the lower right hand quadrant to the right of the multifunction combination switch.

Glad to help. I'm out of town at the moment on questionable security, slow speed internet access. I'll post the pictures I have when I get home in a few days. One question though in the meantime... Are you guys having trouble with the retractor spring function that pulls the belt back into the assy, or are you having trouble with the latch that locks in when you try to pull the belt out quickly?

Cool. Glad that worked. By the way, did you take a look at the early wiring diagrams? If so, were you able to find the speaker anywhere? Am I just missing it, or did they really botch the radio part of the diagram?

So is my black plastic faux leather knob and insert factory for 77? When I got the car, the insert was already loose. It stays in by itself simply with friction, but it's not glued.

Thanks Jeff. My alternator was installed by my PO, so I have no idea what happened... Maybe there were sleeves included and he didn't use them, or maybe there wasn't anything like that included at all. In any event, making a pair or spacer sleeves sounds like the best plan at this point. Thanks again for the data point.

Thanks for the info Mike. The terminals on my alternators are labeled F, N, E, and A. There is no "P" on either one. Does that tell you anything?

Carl, I've been thinking about your radio swap some more and I finally got the chance to look at some of the wiring diagrams. The first thing I noticed is that the early wiring diagrams appear to be incomplete in the radio area. The 72 and 73 diagrams show the radio, but don't show the speaker wires. In fact, I can't find the speaker at all on the US/Canada wiring diagrams for either 72 or 73. There's a radio, but no speaker. It's not until 74 that the speaker and it's wires are included on the diagrams. The second thing is that the colors that you listed above don't match the wiring diagrams. So I'm wondering about the wiring colors that you listed above... Are those colors from the connector sticking out of the dash where you plug in the radio? Or are those the colors of the wires coming out the back of the radio itself? The early wiring diagrams don't show the connector off the back of the radio either, and it's not until 74 that they for that right as well. So it's clear that the wiring wiring diagrams are a questionable source of information, but after looking them over, there do seem to be some consistencies, so here's what I think you've got going on: 72: 1) Blue is power to the radio. 2) The speaker wires are the white derivatives (what you are calling gray is actually "old and dirty white"). 3) Red (are you sure it isn't red with a blue stripe?) is used for faceplate illumination. The reason I say that is there is a red/blue that is fed to the radio for this purpose. I'm thinking that either you missed the blue stripe or they changed the color right at the radio pigtail and dropped the stripe? 4) Ground for the whole shebang is made mechanically through the radio chassis itself? Do they mount the 72 radio in metal all the way to the body? 74: Same as 72, but they included a dedicated ground wire instead of using mechanical chassis mounting. 75/76: 1) Blue is power to the radio. 2) The speaker wires are the white derivatives. 3) Green/white is faceplate illumination supply side. 4) Red (with blue stripe?) is faceplate illumination ground side through the dimmer pot. 5) Black is ground. I know there are unanswered questions with the above, but if all the above makes sense so far, there are some easy ways with a meter to confirm the assumptions above. Let me know if you want to go through that far.

I don't know if the retractor assys are the same for all the years, but I just took a 77 apart yesterday and took some pics. Would it help to post them?

I'll make you an insert. Send me a PM.

Thanks Arne. Out of curiosity, any ideas as to what constitutes a "later" alternator? The reason I ask is that I compared my alternator (the one in the pictures above) to another alternator which I believe to be original from 74, and the holes on both were all the same size (bigger than necessary). I guess it's academic though, because the answer to my original question is "No, there were no spacers or bushings used", right? I'll make some bushings for mine. I'll make one of them shorter than the ear is wide (like you suggested), but I'm thinking I'll include some feature on the other ear to make it a more snug fit on the mounting bracket. It's loose enough now that I'm concerned I'll crack an ear off if I torque that sucker down without some kind of spacer in there. My PO used a washer, and if I'm going to make bushings, I can do better than that.

I took my alternator off and in the process, I noticed that the lower bolt holes are significantly larger in diameter than they need to be. In other words, the bolts fit through the holes and there's still a lot of wiggle room. The lower bolts could be larger in diameter and still fit. I've seen this done on other cars where they pressed in a tight fitting bushing into the holes that slide a little bit as the bolts are tightened. These bushings account for the fact that they can't hold the tolerance on the distance between the alternator mounting holes. But, I don't have any of these bushings on my alternator and I'm wondering if this is normal, or if I'm missing pieces. I'm wondering if my PO got this rebuild and was supposed to move something over from the old one to this one? Here's the alternator: And here's the lower bolt holes in question:

Yup. I bet all your threads stripped out and so your previous owner gooped it up with epoxy and then shoved it onto the shaft to set-up. Out of curiosity, how are you going to rethread it?

Does this answer your questions about sizing? I was going to post this one at first too, but I was worried that I was hogging too much bandwidth. The scale is in hundredths. In other words, each of the smallest divisions is .010 inches:

The green/white wire on the 280 radio is for faceplate illumination.

Heh. Sounds like a typical "old car sat for a long period of time and now it just doesn't run right sometimes". Still could be just about anything. Taking it to the shop that has some familiarity with vintage stuff sounds like a plan. Let us know what they find?

Here's some good shots of my 5 speed shift pattern emblem. I've got the black plastic faux leather knob with the red insert: Insert popped out of the knob: Shot through an eye loupe trying to get as close as possible: If there's any other shots that might help, let me know and I'll try to do what I can.

Well I'm guessing that if you don't smell gas, then you should be OK for the time being. I once fixed a plastic gas tank for a piece of lawn and garden equipment by making some brass feed-throughs. If you get completely desperate, something like this would probably work on your vent tank as well. Clearly not worth the effort I put into it, but if you find you've still got a problem and the simpler solutions don't hold:

All of those designations you are using (M10, M12) are for straight threads. The hole you are trying to plug is probably a tapered thread (not a straight thread) and if that's the case, then none of those "M" size designations are the right ones. That aside... My suggestion for any of the holes you are trying to disable would be to screw the original nipple back into the balance tube and then use a rubber cap for the nipple. Might not be the prettiest solution, but get the bugs worked out first, and make it pretty later if you still have any money left.

I don't have any input into which fuel pump is the best, but you might be able to tell if your having a fuel delivery problem by checking your float bowl levels. Is the problem at idle, or somewhere else?

Mike, I'll take a quality pic and post it here. I'm not sure about your color questions as this is the only knob I've had that has a shift pattern on it.

I've not seen a write-up on "How To Switch From Flat Tops To Round Tops" anywhere. Note that I haven't actually searched the forum(s) for such info, but I've not seen a complete write up anywhere. Do you have a copy of the service manual? If not, download a copy. Looking at your pic (3468), I see a whole bunch of disconnected stuff, but I'm only going to talk about the ones that would cause you big problems: 1) Vacuum port on the front manifold just behind the carb - Used to go to your vapor reclamation system. If I were you, I would reconnect your flow guide valve, but if you choose not to, just cap that port. 2) Holes in the top middle of your balance tube - The one on the left used to go to your anti-backfire valve. If I were you, I would reinstall an anti-backfire valve system and use the port as part of that system. Look for pictures of an earlier round top car for how to connect the anti-backfire system. 3) Holes in the top middle of your balance tube - The one on the right used to go to your idle air control system from your flat tops. You don't get an idle air control with your round tops, so you can just plug that port. 4) Black hose coming out of the balance tube below the two ports mentioned above - That used to go to your temperature controlled idle mixture compensation valve. You don't get that privilege with the round tops, so pull that hose off the balance tube and cap that port. 5) Short nipple sticking out of the balance tube below the two ports mentioned above - That's your PCV valve and it should be plumbed to the crankcase under the distributor near the front timing cover. There's a black braided hose sticking down towards your exhaust manifold... That may be your PCV connection hanging down there. 6) Your EGR stuff is still intact, but it's not doing anything. It is currently disabled and will have no effect. There might be more going on than I see with the above, but look into the above and see what happens. If there's any in particular item you want more info on, just ask.

I'll agree with the consensus above that it's ignition related. Especially if the fuel pump is running and you can smell gas out the tailpipe. If it happens again, you can easily confirm by pulling the coil wire or a spark plug wire and looking for spark while you crank it. Thankfully I have not yet had the pleasure to gain any detailed experience with the ignition modules. Mine (to date) have just worked. But if you can confirm that it's ignition, you might try to grab the wiring harness leading to the module and wiggle it around. If there's a hairline crack heat related intermittent connection in there, the mechanical agitation might be enough to temporarily reestablish connection. Haha!!

I've got a black plastic (faux leather) five speed knob on my 77. I believe it's got the original shift pattern insert. Would a pic of that help in any way? Do you want a nice close up?

Nice work. I'm kinda surprised that they used a plastic tank for that at all. One other thing... looking at the pictures, it looks like there may be the start of a split on the next larger nipple. The one next to the one you already fixed? Is that a camera anomaly or is that one starting to crack off as well?

If it's not stock, one other (unlikely) possibility is that it has a set screw threaded into the bottom to lock the knob in place. If there's no retainer of any sort and it's a plastic insert as suggested above, I'm kinda surprised that the threads in the plastic don't just give way and strip out. That's what mine did and I ended up making a threaded brass insert and glued it in place to replace the original plastic one.