lighting

[chevy99]

Hey guys have a question here but don't know where it goes.The question is spring is hopefully here soon and i just got my 79 truck back from paint and was wandering,before i put the motor and interior back in i would like to check out all the lights,dash, rears, fronts.I am probably going about this wrong but oh well.So do i just hook up the battery to the positive or how does this need to be done? Thanks in advance.

[Lt.Del]

the positive cable goes to the starter solenoid.  no motor in, no starter is in.  The ground cable goes to usually the  alternator bracket to ground the engine and chasis, then a ground strap from rear of the head to firewall.  no engine, no ground.

now, there is a way to do this.  There is a smaller red wire that hooks to the solenoid and ties into the main positive...the red wire goes to fuse panel eventually, through fusible links and such. I guess you could bring your starter over and hook up the red cable and the red little wire and pretend the engine is in place.  You can ground the black negative cable temporarily to the chasis with any fender bolt or similar. 

[bake74]

     sgtdel has a great method if you are not very good with electrical systems, if you are just tap into the light circuits and test the lights only, just make sure to put back to original the circuits when you are done.

[1979C20]

I dod my stereo wiring and kc light wiring while waiting on engine parts. I used a pair of plastic vise grips to clamp the bat+ starter cable to the bat+ out from the solenoid. And, the ground has a vhassis ground hooked up to the rad support. That was enough to test all of my light bulbs and wire my stereo etc.