How many wires are needed to be connected to a starter? One is obviously the heavy gauge cable from the + side of the battery, but how many little wires do there need to be? The reason I ask is because on my chevelle starter I only had one little wire. When I took off the one off my camaro last night, there were two, one on each side of the larger cable.

Only one little wire to activate the solenoid and kick it into action. Many factory applications use various terminals on the starter as a power tap-in point for other stuff. But only one wire actually ACTIVATES the starter.

I'll have to trace back the other wire then, I'm not sure what it goes to.

It will go to the + side of your ignition coil. This is so that the coil gets power directly from the main battery cable while starting the engine.

"This is so that the coil gets power directly from the main battery cable while starting the engine"

which is required if you have points style ignition. Once started, the points are supplied via a resistor on the firewall with 9v to stop the points from burning.

If you have HEI, the post is redundant as a constant 12v is supplied to the HEI cap.

Car had an HEI