Toasted my fusible link last night!

I have been battling a head light issue for quite some time. This showed up after I bypassed my ammeter in the dash with a 10ga wire and a fuseable link from the output on my alternator to my starter relay.

At idle the lights are fine but, just up off of idle they (for lack of a better term) strobe. Both, high and low beams. The strobeing pattern speeds up with the engine rpm. It has been driving me nuts. The first thing I changed was my voltage regulator and it made no difference.

I swapped alternators and made sure that the alternator case was grounded. That made no difference.

I cleaned and checked all of my grounds in the wiring harness under the hood and still no effect.

I ended up adding a set of relays to my headlights and that made them brighter but, did nothing for the strobing. I ended up swapping my dimmer switch and my headlight switch in my cluster. Neither made any difference.

So, out of frustration last night I picked up another voltage regulator and starter relay. When I got home (in the dark) I swapped the voltage regulator and the starter relay. I should have changed one thing at a time but, I was frustrated and hate working in the dark. I decided that I should go ahead and upgrade the bypass wire from the back of my alternator to my starter relay to an 8ga wire with a fuseable link.

I had everything wired up and was getting ready to fire it up. I popped the trunk to hook up my battery and it sparked quite a bit more than normal. I thought ohhh no, I stood up and could see smoke starting to come up from under the hood.

CRAP!

I quickly disconnected the battery and rushed up there expecting to see the worst. I instantly started feeling up all the wires I could get my hands on and turns out the only thing that was hot/smoking was the original fusible link at the bulk head.

I felt pretty stupid, :banghead: I am not sure what happened. I double checked everything that I could and didn't see anything that would have caused that to happen. Yes, my battery was connected correctly!

As I was laying in bed :banghead: I started to wonder if when I tightened the nut down on the stud on the starter relay if maybe I bent one of the terminals and it was making contact with the case of the starter relay and shorted it out? Or maybe the terminal on the back of the alternator was touching the alternator case?

I had to close it up and walk away from it last night. It kind of made me sick that I made such a stupid mistake.

Anyone have any thoughts? I am going to replace the fusible link tonight and go over everything I touched with a fine tooth come before I touch the battery again. #-o