DONT TAKE SHORTCUTS, please

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rp23g7

rp23g7

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Hey guys, what a fun day i had.

20 yrs ago, the previous owner of my wife's 41 Chrysler just "HAD' to get the car done for a show. He took a shortcut with the wiring.

He routed the power window wires straight to the battery, even though there was a circuit for them on the fuse box.

He also routed the wires straight down the console next to the parking brake.

Well 20 yr old wiring doesnt like shortcuts, or being next to moving metal stuff.

The 41 almost burned today, because the wiring had shorted out on the parking brake, finding this out at 50 MPH isnt fun, neither is buring your hands on melted wiring pulling it out.

Remember, you may take a short cut to the junk yard if you take a shortcut to get your car done just because you may win some plastic stuff at a show.
 
I lost a 73 Charger like that . Stupid kid before me had a set of aftermarket gauges wired up under the dash . Left them bare , and shorted out on the dash structure . Right to the ground it burnt .
 
man,I have a serious OCD when it comes to wiring on cars.I cant stand jumbled up and hanging wiring from the dash or anything like that.In fact before I buy a car,I look closely for wiring hack jobs.Im glad your car didnt go up in smoke.
 
my cudas kind of hacked on .. i have not got a shot to look at yet and fix whats hacked ur post makes me fell like i did the right thing i took the battery out of it intell i can look it over sorry bout ur car man pics would be cool thenwe can all cuss him to lol
 
dart_doctor said:
my cudas kind of hacked on .. i have not got a shot to look at yet and fix whats hacked ur post makes me fell like i did the right thing i took the battery out of it intell i can look it over sorry bout ur car man pics would be cool thenwe can all cuss him to lol
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If you need a harness let me know I will check it to see how it is.I will pull it if you want.
 
Had a close mishap my self,smoke rolling from the dash pinched wires and multiple butt splices .Solderd all splices and no more butt splices .I hate butt splices!!!
 
Vehicle wireing is bad enough WITHOUT being hacked.

Years ago, at Miramar, I had a /6 loaner Valiant while my RR was getting "hacked" by the McCune Chrysler Plymouth body shop, a huge mistake I'll never make again. O'course, I'm not in San Diego anymore, either.

Anyhow, one cold morning, I'd started the car to warm up. My leading chief came in, gave me the pained-eyebrows-Columbo-detective look, and said, "uh, I just have one little question---is it supposed to be squealing and smoking?"

So I go out, open the hood, and the alternator is STOPPED but the (fortunately) ragged, oily, and loose fan belt is going round and round.

So I shut the mess off, decide to investigate -- huge mistake.

I loosened the alternator, moved the pulley with a rag, and THEN -- sat there and watched the entire harness go psoo ossoos sssss ssuusus ssss suutttt!! ffffppptt!! AND THEN the fuse link fried.

One diode had fallen out of the alternator, STILL ATTACHED to the wire connection. When I wiggled the pulley, it shorted, and burned up the harness.


See, when ur old like me, all this **** has already happened to ya. YOU guys have to look FORWARD to this crap.
 
dart_doctor said:
my cudas kind of hacked on .. i have not got a shot to look at yet and fix whats hacked ur post makes me fell like i did the right thing i took the battery out of it intell i can look it over sorry bout ur car man pics would be cool thenwe can all cuss him to lol
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I took some pics and will post later, i called him and called him a friggen idiot, i am yanking all that stuff outta there and starting from scratch next chance i get
 
I feel your pain I had a car years ago that had a electric fire doing about 80+ under the dash I think I did a stop and yank very quick. I got second degree burns on my arms but saved the car. Thanks to someone else who did a shady job.

I hate wiring and dread the day my wiring has to be done, but I have a new harness and time so I will be ok.
 
t-granger said:
I feel your pain I had a car years ago that had a electric fire doing about 80+ under the dash I think I did a stop and yank very quick. I got second degree burns on my arms but saved the car. Thanks to someone else who did a shady job.

I hate wiring and dread the day my wiring has to be done, but I have a new harness and time so I will be ok.
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Dang Right Cafe Racer

Its always kinda funny hearing someones story about smoking the wiring untill it happens to you. I aint laughing ever again. She is still shiny on the outside and a little smoky smelling on the inside, but she still managed to win Best Custom and 2nd Place Hot Rod at a local show on the weekend.
 
Nice Save, I'm in the middle of wiring my car right now. It's not hard, just time consuming if you want to do it neat....
 
A couple of years ago a friend of mine married a woman and became part owner of a neat-looking pro-streeted Chevy LUV truck with a blown sbc in it. Her former husband had built the little truck but hadn't completely finished it before he died.
As my buddy was checking it over, he ran into some hacked wiring under the dash. Turns out the PO must have needed to do a "rush" job on something, didn't have the correct wire he needed, so went in the house and cut a LAMP CORD off one of the lamps in the house and used that and some electrical tape to finish the job.
My buddy tore all of the wiring out of the LUV truck and completely re-wired it before he even attempted to see if it would run. He was afraid of what else may have been in there.
 
I've seen similar a couple of times in conversion vans. a second fuse panel was added near the original and its wiring routed too close to the park brake mechanism.
 
pauly v.100 said:
I'm nearly finished wiring my car. first time for me and its makin my brain hurt.
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Mine too. I've been studying wiring diagrams to help make things a little easier. Until I completely comprehend what Im looking at, all its making is a migraine.
 
problem is some people think they are doing things right. its because they don't know any better. it scares the hell out of me when i see certain cars at cruises. to think that garbage is on the same road as my family scares the hell out of me. have you seen what some guys do with their brake systems? every state should make these old cars o through a safety check. they really need to be gone over from top top bottom...


i have a few friends into the rat rod scene. those guys (in this area anyway) are the worst. one guy had a dragging read brake for god knows how long. one day on a 2 hour trip the damn thing got so hot that it burned his car to the ground. why? because after buying a car that had sat for god knows how long he didn't go over the car to see if it was safe. it was too cool to have it all vintage. well he paid for that decision. hopefully he learned from it.

another guy that runs in that scene almost got his girlfriend killed because his brakes pulled to one side when he would hit the brake, never bothered to fix the damn thing. it was never a problem because he would slow down slowly and never had to hit the brake hard. then one day someone pulled out in front of him and he had to stand on the brakes. the wheel was ripped out of his hand, (horn ring when through his arm) the car made a 90* turn, ejected his girlfriend into the middle of the street and smashed into a pole totaling the car. he was lucky that no one was hurt bad. stitches in his arm, cuts and bruises for the rest of the people. again it could have been avoided with some simple and cheap routine maintenance...

guys think they are saving money by not replacing this stuff. its no joke! you can kill someone with this way of thinking. if the car has to sit an extra month then let it. its just not worth getting hurt over..
 
ocdart said:
A couple of years ago a friend of mine married a woman and became part owner of a neat-looking pro-streeted Chevy LUV truck with a blown sbc in it. Her former husband had built the little truck but hadn't completely finished it before he died.
As my buddy was checking it over, he ran into some hacked wiring under the dash. Turns out the PO must have needed to do a "rush" job on something, didn't have the correct wire he needed, so went in the house and cut a LAMP CORD off one of the lamps in the house and used that and some electrical tape to finish the job.
My buddy tore all of the wiring out of the LUV truck and completely re-wired it before he even attempted to see if it would run. He was afraid of what else may have been in there.
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I wonder if that was the same guy who did the wiring for the guy we bought our '60 valiant from. The guy had inherited his grandma's car after she died, which was in a different state than him. He paid a butt-load of money to have it restored and shipped to him when it was finished. He said he drove it a couple times after he got it back, once around the block and once to a auto repair shop, two blocks from his place. They gave him an estimate on everything that needed to be done to it, mechanical-wise. He was so upset about it, he gave up on the car and sold it to us as long as we promise to keep him updated on it's progress. Anyway, when we got the car home, we started stripping it right away. The wiring harness had pieces of extension cord spliced into it and a cord off of a vacuum cleaner. A Kirby to be exact. Wife recognized it right away because the cord on her vacuum cleaner is the same one used in the car.
 
I am amazed at some of the crap people drive down the street with. This one lady brought her old car in as a trade-in because the cops pulled her over and told her it was unsafe to be driving 8 kids around in. The only thing holding the car together was rust. The floor boards were gone...in it's place was rotted plywood, patched and reinforced with tape and cardboard. 8 kids...in a car with no floorboards. She left the baby seat behind and when I pulled it out, I discovered some kind of animal died there and was just left there. The only thing left of the dead animal was fur, a partial skull and a smelly body-fluid stain in the seat, soaked all they way through.
 
Back in my college days a friend had a '66 Barracuda. CB radios were the rage at the time and he took it to a friends house and they put in an underdash CB. He parked it in the parking lot and happened to look out about two hours later. There was smoke rolling out from under the hood. He ran out and opened the hood to take a look at the problem and the additional air allowed the gasoline from the carb to catch fire! So he slammed the hood again. The dorms 20lb fire extinguisher saved the car from serious damage but made a real mess of things. It did save the car from anything more than seriously burnt paint on the hood and, of course, the wiring harness which was totally gone. We could not determine from the wiring mess that was left what they had done wrong as the wiring had pretty much melted into a mass but it is a perfect example of why even 12 volts must be treated properly.
 
abodyjoe said:
problem is some people think they are doing things right. its because they don't know any better. it scares the hell out of me when i see certain cars at cruises. to think that garbage is on the same road as my family scares the hell out of me. have you seen what some guys do with their brake systems? every state should make these old cars o through a safety check. they really need to be gone over from top top bottom...


i have a few friends into the rat rod scene. those guys (in this area anyway) are the worst. one guy had a dragging read brake for god knows how long. one day on a 2 hour trip the damn thing got so hot that it burned his car to the ground. why? because after buying a car that had sat for god knows how long he didn't go over the car to see if it was safe. it was too cool to have it all vintage. well he paid for that decision. hopefully he learned from it.

another guy that runs in that scene almost got his girlfriend killed because his brakes pulled to one side when he would hit the brake, never bothered to fix the damn thing. it was never a problem because he would slow down slowly and never had to hit the brake hard. then one day someone pulled out in front of him and he had to stand on the brakes. the wheel was ripped out of his hand, (horn ring when through his arm) the car made a 90* turn, ejected his girlfriend into the middle of the street and smashed into a pole totaling the car. he was lucky that no one was hurt bad. stitches in his arm, cuts and bruises for the rest of the people. again it could have been avoided with some simple and cheap routine maintenance...

guys think they are saving money by not replacing this stuff. its no joke! you can kill someone with this way of thinking. if the car has to sit an extra month then let it. its just not worth getting hurt over..
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Oh no kidding, i worked for a Midas shop here for about a yr. You wouldnt believe the crap i saw, and how ignorant people are.

"oh my car was making a strange sound for a while, but it quit, but now my brakes feel funny"

One example, 1 ton 95 Dodge pickup, same statement as above, now his brake pedal sinks. The trucks brake pad had worn down, went halfway through the backing plate and all the way through the front of the rotor, through the cooling fins, and into the back of the rotor, what the hell is wrong with people?
 
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