Help with mystery wires

[Stu]

I have a bundle of wires underneath my washer bottle on my '76. The wires come from the firewall, into 2 relays. Then one, the wire wrapped in the black plastic tube, went to the sensor underneath the intake manifold. One wire goes to the starter motor (just a simple push-on connector).

I do have an after-market alarm system, which was de-activated when I bought the car. Could this be some ignition/starter kill component? I want, of course to rip it out and throw it away.

Thanks for your help.

[Conserv]

Stu,

It looks like the last remnants of your car's emissions controls. If you no longer have an air pump or thermactor (if your car is a 49-state version, it only had the air pump), you can probably remove these relays and wiring. There's at least one other thread that details the removal of these.

Regards,

Steve

[Stu]

All emission stuff has been removed, except I guess for this. I'm aware of some threads regarding removal of the 2 vacuum devices on the firewall and running a single wire from a point on the fusebox to the coil, but these looked different. Thanks.

[Mike Self]

wires--they were either cloth wrapped or inside a smooth vinyl tube. And that dual relay holder doesn't look familiar either, so I suspect they may be some remnants of an old alarm system.

Suggestion to everyone: if you make any changes to your car's wiring, please document it so the subsequent owner won't go nuts trying to figure out what you did. It's a five minute job to draw a diagram and label wire colors, terminal numbers on the items the wires connect, and what the system does. Do that and the next owner won't curse the PO (that's you!)

mike

[Taymar]

For what it's worth, I removed something very similar looking from that area, it was a double relay block with two 'tabs' that were screwed to the firewall. It all looked pretty factory.

[Conserv]

I'm sure Mike is correct about those black corrugated tubes, but the blue tubes (covered in your example by the corrugated tubes) are original. Attached are a couple of photos of my car; mine is '76 49-state version with the emissions controls intact.

If you no longer have the emissions controls, I'm pretty confident they can come out.

Steve

[FunkyLaneO]

All the stuff in the blue vinyl tubing and everything that is attached to it is emissions related with the exception of the resistor wire buried in there that goes to your coil. All of it can go if you have removed the other emissions stuff. (you can tear it apart and get out the resistor wire or get a resistor from an earlier vehicle and run a wire from fuse 12 to the resistor, then to positive terminal of the coil)

[Stu]

Surgery successful. Thanks everyone for your help.