Please help gf is mad
 

Hello, so after a successful day working on the car i decided to hook up the tach. I found some directions online, here is what i did.....

Ran black wire from battery, hooked to tach
Green wire to distributor
Spliced into red wire from ignition harness and hooked to tach

and viola the car wont start, everything has power, radio horn lights etc but wont turn over.... Please any input would be greatly appreciated, also please be specific because im new at this stuff .. thanks!

I am not sure. Am trying to find the answer for you. But I know someone else will beat me to it.

Won't crank, or won't fire? Seems really odd if it won't crank... :confused:

If it cranks, but won't fire, I'd be looking at the distributor to make sure you didn't unhook something important there when you were hooking up the tach.

Black wire to battery? Black wire is typically ground, if you wired to negative post on battery that's good. Could also connect to any good ground under the dash. Green to distributor, tach terminal on HEI or negative on coil of points system. Red wire to anything hot when car is in run, their is a IGN connection in fuse block that is a good point.

You didn't mention what type car, year, type of ignition and type of tach so I'm making some assumptions that may not be correct.

Is your girl friend still mad?

Sounds like Hank has you covered. Good post as usual, Hank. ;)

Sorry, 72 chevelle, not sure of ignition, some cheap tach that came with car.... I dunno i checked voltages, no voltage when ignition is turned no voltage between ground and reg ign wire. Car wont even turn over grrrr. I have it booked to b looked at on wednesday so we will see.

Man, just go back through and retrace your steps. I'll bet you find what is wrong yourself. Check your connections, and make sure nothing got loosened when you were trying to put the tach in.

I'd just unhook what you hooked up and see if that corrects it and if it does you can kick yourself then....ask me how I know...ha.

Word of advice...never make to many changes at once as if anything goes wrong you can just undo it or concentrate on what you did to correct it.

X10,000 Complete truth there, Ric.

As stated previously. Commonly black to ground. Red to 12volt switched power and the green to tach signal.
Is this what you did?
From what I can understand of your connections.your grounding the power and power to ground. Still dosent explain why no cranking. How did you determine what wires you spliced into?

From the directions i got they said to splice into the red wire coming from the ignition. I also unhooked what i did... still no cranking, its at the shop now.

Have you checked all the fuses? You're going to have to trace starter voltage, S terminal on starter, from the starter back through the neutral safety switch, ignition switch then fuse block or the other way around.

I am betting blown fuse. From putting ground to power. Be interested in hearing what your shop finds.

If the ignition is no longer hot when on then you more then likely just blew a fuse.

Is there a fusible link that he could have cooked by crossing the wires?

It's possible. I believe the main splice/distribution point on the 72 is from the starter. Battery cable to starter then I believe fusible link to main power feed. He should have absolutely nothing if he blew the fusible link. No lights, accessories, nothing.