I'm posting this for my brother. We were talking about his project that he's building and raised some questions.
The motor is out of the car [Mopar] and has rewired it with a new harness. Is there any way that you can trick wire the system to get power to the vehicle to ops check electrical systems?
I'm thinking that you'd have to have the starter wired and with all the ground wires run to the starter and starter grounded to car to complete the system, but really don't know if that'd work?
Please tell me if this can be done and how to go about doing it, Thanks.

I should think if you were to make a good ground to the body/chasses of car from negative battery post, and run small gage red wire from positive battery terminal to threaded lug on starter relay, and from there run over to bulkhead connector to feed dash components, lights, heater motor, wipers, etc. it would work. By not having alternator & coil connected you won’t be able to check charging & other parts of the ignition circuit.

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC

That is kinda my thinkin on this, and I would think that by doing that you could even get the starter to spin. Understand about the alt and ignig, and not really worried about that as he has rewired the whole car and was wondering how maybe to ops check it. It just seems easier to get the bugs worked out with the motor outta the car. Anybody else? Thanks

The starter draws ~220A (if I remember correctly), so you need pretty hefty conductors. If I remember correctly, Advance and other parts places will test starters and alternators for free off the car.

As part of my club rebuilding a whole Mopar, I tested each component as much as possible before we installed it, especially the instrument cluster and wiper motor.

We first made sure that there was no significant load with everything off, then we connected the battery for power and began testing according to a checklist and we always had voluteers watching for anything burning or sparking. We began with the unfused things (alternator, lights, etc., ignition) and then we put in the fuses one at a time and check each system. That system took an hour or so, but seemed to go very well.

One trick is to connect a headlight in series with the battery just for testing, greatly limiting the maxium current in case of a short - the headlight will just get very bright.

He started this project with no motor or trans, he's basically built this from the ground up and wants to check all that he can before initial fre up, as long as the motors out he want to check to make sure all sub systems are up to snuff. Better to do it now with the motor out. BTW he's working on a 66 Satellite that he's stuffing a 383 into. Keep em comming, Thanks.

W/ motor/alt/starter out, I'd make sure the battery cables were prevented from shorting, then put power in at the stud at the starter relay and ground to the body, perhaps at the headlight ground point.

The headlight-in-series trick would work very well here; almost everything could be tested w/ little chance of overheating anything before putting power in directly.

Bro and I will be working on the vehicle this weekend, we'll play around and see what happens. I'll report back with what happens in a few days. Thanks