Battery draining fast

Happy New Year,

The joys of 50 year old electrical systems. That can happen to fusible links, they corrode away under the insulation and you don't see it.

If you are replacing the link with fusible link wire you want a 16 gauge link usually color coded blue. You should be able to find this replacement link wire at an auto parts store. They are a pain to replace because you have to put on a new 5/16" ring terminal and then deal with the bulk head connector pin.

I prefer to have to go through this foolishness only once and that's why I go to a Maxi-Fuse. NAPA has a good quality Maxi-Fuse holder P/N 784482. You cut the wire loop on the holder in the middle and crimp on a new 5/16" ring terminal on one end. The other end is a bit too heavy to get into the bulk head connector pin. So, there are two ways to deal with that. The first is to use a very short piece of wire that will fit the pin and splice it to the fuse holder wire. The second way is what I refer and that is to splice a new piece of #8 red wire to the fuse holder lead and run it directly to the ammeter terminal that presently has a red wire on it. You would remove the original red wire from the ammeter. This gets a troublesome bulk head connector out of the way. The Maxi-Fuse is very easy to replace in the future if need be and they are available even in big hardware stores.

As to fuse size, these cars typically had 35 amp alternators so a 40 amp Maxi-Fuse is fine. If the car has A/C they typically got 45 amp alternators so use a 50 Amp fuse.