Need help troubleshooting ignition problem

[GarnnerS]

I’m looking for recommendations on troubleshooting an electrical issue on my truck. It’s a 67’ D200 with a 318/727. The previous owner installed a Holley Sniper EFI, Vintage AC, Dakota Digital gauges, a new steering column, and a stereo system. All of those things were spliced, diced, and hacked into the factory harness leaving the inside of the dash and firewall a crazy rats nest of loose, cut, and intertwined wires. I am collecting things to redo the wiring but I’m not quite at that point yet and it hasn’t been an issue in the 4 years I’ve owned the truck until last week.

Following installing a replacement shifter cable, which involved a lot of pushing and moving of the webbing of wires, now the truck will try to start and will fire up but will not stay running once the switch back to run. First thing I did was replace the ignition switch and that did not solve it. Right now when I turn on the key, power goes to my gauges (ignition 1). When I crank the key, the fuel pump/efi/radio all get power (ignition 2) but just while it’s cranking. I put a jumper on the ignition from battery to ignition 2 and it’ll run perfectly fine like that.

So basically I’m wondering what will cause ignition 2 to only have power when I am cranking only.

[charleypete1957]

I had that same problem once, and it ended up being a bad ignition ballast resistor. Put an ohmmeter across it and see if it’s open. If it is, that’s your problem. Mine did exactly that. It would run while cranking but as soon as you turned the key back to “on” it would die.