What exactly is this thing in the attached picture?

I've been working on some wiring issues and I have this part in my car but cannot find it on any wire diagram....

 

Looks like a relay to me. Unplug it and find out what doesnt work.

 

I think it is part of a home made "extra" wire harness that is in my car.

There is a wire that comes from under the dash to this relay, then a hot and ground wire go to the electric choke with another wire going to the solenoid.

Will probably just leave it as is but I am cleaning up some wiring under the hood and got curious what exactly this thing was but it appears to be some extra wiring someone along the way added to feed an electric choke.

 

Sounds like you just answered your own question. My guess is that if you traced that wire under the dash you would find it attached to the ignition switch or a circuit that was hot with the key on.

 

yeah, I think so.

I've been cleaning things up and beating my head against the wall with what should have been an easy swap out of an old worn out harness with a new one.

The odd thing was the red wire on the gauge feed harness that should have been attached to the solenoid on the same post as the battery cable wasn't hooked up at all....

I plan to get the rest of the wires on the new harness hooked up tonight and then see what happens when I try to start it. I know for certain that either the car won't start or the reverse lights won't work due to some "splicing" a previous owner did to the neutral safety switch. I might end up having to replace my under dash harness to get it all correctly wired.

Have I mentioned I can't stand people who jerry rig things instead of spending a few bucks on parts to fix things right?

 

Fast question I was just kicking around...if this relay, etc are just to feed juice to the electric choke...could I eliminate it all together and hook the choke wires up somewhere else?

Maybe run the choke's hot wire to the + side of the coil or something? Not sure what I'd do with the negative side though....or would that fry my coil

 

You should be able to eliminate the relay and wire it into anything that is hot with the key on but I wouldn't wire it to the coil. You could actually hook the ground wire right to one of the screws on the choke housing.

 

How about running the hot side to something on the solenoid?

I actually just got done pulling my under dash harness out. Going to replace it. Too many splices, mystery wires, etc. Turns out the wire from the relay via a couple of strange splices ended up being wired into the fuse panel. It was a pain but I did finally trace it as part of the larger job of taking out the harness.

All this started with installing a Pertronix but had too low of volts at the coil. I had been meaning to replace the gauge feed harness anyway because the wires were old and looked a bit spliced up. But the previous owner had some screwed up splice into the gauage feed harness for the neutral safety switch. I might could have figured out what he did but I've been putting off the under dash harness and gauage feed harness for too long and finally just decided to say to heck with it and face the music. I was checking out some of the wires I pulled out as part of the gauge feed harness and lets just say it was past time to replace it.

Have I mentioned I am getting sick of chasing down wires, LOL!

 

The reason you probably had too low of volts to the coil was because of the pink resistor wire. Even with a new wiring harness, you will need to bypass that.

 

From what I have seen, most people recommend wiring the electric choke to the stator post on the alternator (assuming it is a stock type alternator).

The reason being, the electric choke only gets power when the engine is actually running.