hey guys i noticed a lot of talk about different types of kickdown cables and what not on here lately. im a little confused. i recently pulled the engine out of my 69 4-door cutlass. the only thing attached to the transmision were the cooling lines, and a steel vaccum line. do i have any sort of kickdown mechanism in my car ? i have a wire that i cant remember where it attaches to. it runs down to the starter, and i think it atached to the coil ? would that have anything to do with it ? or does this wire actually run somewhere else ? i honestly cant remember lol. thanks guys

 

Kickdown cable/lever/electric solenoid is referencing a downshift to the transmission when rapid acceleration is applied at the foot feed.

 

No, You don't have a kickdown cable. The vacuum line controls shift. If the wire you have won't reach the tranny, it's not for it. If it does, it's for the electric kickdown. This was on the TH400's only. I beleive. I may be wrong on that. Also, only two types of wires go to the starter. One for the starter engage, (small wire connection), and the battery, and any other connection that needs full battery power, (large wire connection). It was cheaper for GM to run non-ignition power supply to the starter, than run it to the battery. That's why you have more than one wire to the large terminal with the battery cable. Hope this helps. Jim.

 

I think the real reason is that the starter motor pulls a LOT of current and the solenoid which is activated by the small ignition wire actually switches that voltage from the large wire from the battery to the motor to cause it to run. You don't need to run that large of a wire from the battery, to a switch on the dash, to the motor.

 

A 69 with a 350 engine could have come with one of two different transmissions - the 2 speed Jetaway or the 3 speed TH350 (the TH400 was not available behind the 350). The TH350 should have a kickdown cable that runs through the firewall and connects to the accelerator pedal. The Jetaway used an electric kickdown and will have a wire to the solenoid. What does the shift indicator on the car say - PRNDL or PRNDSL?

Sorry, but that's not correct. As noted above, both the Jetaway and TH400 used the electric kickdown in 1969. The wire harness will have the pigtail even if the car came with a TH350, it just won't be connected. Also, the vac modulator does control shift points but is unrelated to the kickdown function. Any of the three available automatics in 1969 used a kickdown function in addition to the vac modulator. Again, the Jetaway and TH400 used electric, the TH350 used cable.

 

Its a TH350. now that i think about it, im pretty sure that wire connected to the coil. so what would that be for ? the wire will reach to the coil, and it runs down and joins the wires harnessed together that run to the starter. im replacing the stock distributor with an HEI. so can i just not hook it up ?thanks for all the help guys

 

That wire was for powering the coil during starting if I remembre right. Yes for HEI you would just want to remove this connections at both ends of the harness.

Best bet on HEI is to run power from the IGN plug in the distributor....Something around 12-10 AWG.