Here's a real kick in the groin guys. I was wiring by the Chilton's manual, section 2-8 fig. 18. It shows High Voltage Switch for all 1996-99 4.3L engines back to front wiring on that side to be 5,1,3 to 5,1,3. Page 2-4 Fig.9 High Voltage Switch system operational schematic for all 1996-99 4.3L engines is 5,1,3 to 5,3,1. I had it right!!! Why do the figures differ? Colby's schematic is right, but it doesn't match the schematic on page 2-8. Chilton's must really love to screw with us that know just enough to be dangerous!!! Any ideas why they would put differing schematics for the same system? Thanks for all of your help guys! Couldn't have ever figured it out without your help! God bless the Blazer forum!

 

That's strange...glad it helped. Take a sharpie and X out that other drawing in your manual that way you'll remember next time

 

Cylinder #'s are Cylinder #'s. The only way they change is if Bank 1 is on the left, but they still go front of engine to back of engine in order...

Glad this is sorted out though.

 

Yet another reason to stay away from Chilton & Haynes. GM shop manual, Alldata, or Mitchell is the ONLY way to go. Chilton & Haynes are usually ok if you're changing a bulb or doing an oil change, but other than that, they're worthless.

 

They did the same thing with the Ignition unit on the Ford Explorers. One the one side, the distributor and the Engine plugs are the same, on the other side they swap two of them just to make it less intuative. You would think they would have ran some internal wiring in the Distr. so the dist. matches the Engine on both sides of the engine.

 

While it may be less intuitive, it is not because they decided to make it more difficult for you to work on your vehicle. The tooling to have the traces inside the cap over lap, maintaining proper plastic thicknesses between traces, etc would have made for a more expensive cap. If you look at the design of the cap for the 4.3L side post style, no traces overlap. Not to mention that they labeled the posts to the cylinder numbers...

Heck, look at how it was before. IMO, this is a large step in the intuitive direction over the old way of doing it where you had to know the firing order and wire locations on the cap.