Updating 1968 Chevrolet C-10 Engine - Restoration Rehab

The stock starter bolted to the bellhousing, so I was concerned that a standard Chevy block-mounted starter may be an issue. The block was machined to accept a standard starter so I rolled the dice and it proved to be a nonissue. Powermaster suggests 0.060- to 0.140-inch clearance between the face of the ring gear and the front face of the starter pinion.

The original starter also used a wire that ran to the ‘R’ terminal (yellow in photo), something most gear reduction starters do not have. This provides 12 volts to the coil during cranking. In our case, it’s not needed so it’s simply tied back and taped up. The large terminal connects to 12V battery while the smaller is wired to the ignition switch.

Hose Candy is a neat company that makes kits for installing vacuum hose using CNC quick-couplers. Pictured is what it took to assemble the simple vacuum advance hose from the Edlebrock carb to the MSD distributor.

The result is a trick looking vacuum hose system that can be connected and disconnected with half-a-twist of your thumb and finger.

And there you have it. Finished off with a ’70-’72 Z28 Camaro air cleaner courtesy of Classic Industries, our grimey stocker is transformed into a ’60s-style, hot rod powerplant. The 307 Turbofire 200hp decal on the air cleaner says it all!

Here’s the stock wiring harness from the alternator side.

And here’s the external regulator.

First, I traced the wires back into the harness and removed what I wouldn’t be needing. The white (yellowish) and blue wires communicate between the voltage regulator and alternator and we will no longer need those. The red wire connected to the charging system. This is replaced by the red wire that runs from the BAT terminal on the back of the alternator to the battery. The brown wire connects to the indicator light on the dash.

I opted to wire the one-wire as a three-wire for two reasons. One, I could keep the idiot light in the dash working by attaching the brown wire in the stock wiring harness to the #1 post on the alternator.

Two, I wanted to bypass the internal “exciter” setting built into the alternator. Typically, the alternator “excites” or turns on around 800 rpm. While that’s not normally an issue, I encountered an unforeseen electrical gremlin that caused the truck be unresponsive until the rpms were brought up high enough for the alternator to “excite”. With 12 volts at the coil during cranking and once it fired, I was at a loss as to why it ran this way but it was totally unresponsive until the alternator excited. This often required some careful “finessing” of the throttle until the engine came to life. Once I wired it this way so that the alternator “turned on” with 12V switched power, the problem went away. If there’s any electrical gurus out there who can solve this, shoot me an email and I’ll publish the answer and send you some CCT swag!

One additional recommendation that Brady had was to ground the alternator itself, which can yield a gain of 60 to 70 percent more efficiency. Powdercoated brackets, engine blocks, etc can keep the circuit from properly grounding otherwise. The lowest wire connects from the alternator housing to the chassis ground on the opposite side of the truck.