After a fire.....

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could this be the source of fire? the black wire to alternator was pinched between the valve cover gasket and
the head. I could imagine this drawing current from ammeter, and that current also running to starter (which also had a melted solenoid wire). Note that the black wire to alternator is not at all burned going to the alternator, only up to point where the wire was pinched. You cabn see the insulation is pinched, but badly burned only on the side upstream towards firewall/ammeter, not the pinch closer to alternator. Key was not in ignition when the fire started.
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And there's your short ,
So tracing back to the Battery that wire goes through the B pin in the Bulkhead connector to the splice on its way to the Ammeter , then through the ammeter to the Z pin in the bulkhead connector to the Starter Relay Bat terminal , then to the Battery .
On its way its bundled with most of the under dash wiring and the resulting Fire .

If it had a fusible link It would be on the engine compartment side of the Z pin in the bulkhead connector and only burned that link thus saving the wiring and no fire .
 
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Rounding corner on getting this wagon on road. It has a power tailgate window. It seems there is a 10 ga, black wire supplying 12 v to the circuit breaker in photo 1. But the source end of wire burned away. There are 2 pics of circuit breakers in manual. One connects a red wire to the window lift circuit breaker (pic2) , and says to "see inst panel wiring" for the feed to breaker. Pic 3 shows a circuit breaker with no red wire, but a feed from ammeter.
Are breakers in pics 2 & 3 the same?
More simply, where's the best place to get always-hot voltage to the breaker in pic 1??
Thanks, automotive angels!

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