Fireworks under dash

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fratzog lover

fratzog lover

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Got home from work today, and it was a cool 63 degrees, perfect for a drive. after a 5 mile warm up, I turned the corner and decided to give it the berries. Got an original AVS rebuilt by Fishy68 and it has no bog at all, so I'm like a kid with a new toy. Lo and behold as the revs climb in 1st I see sparks and what looked momentarily like flames shooting down on my foot like a roman candle. I assume my accelerator pedal frame made contact with a bare wire. Its almost dark and with a flashlight I couldnt really see any evidence of arcing, carbon, etc, when I got home. Waiting for tomorrows daylight, but in the mean time, I'm left wondering. Whatever it was, it wasnt a cigarette lighter wire shorting out, it was major current. Till then anyone ever experience this? Any educated guesses? Thanks.
360 dart, column shifted 904, manifolds, stock exhaust.
 
my first thought is the throttle cable is acting as a ground wire. I have grounds from my battery to the block to the firewall and directly from the battery to the body
 
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Exactly the area it came from. I need to look at the braided cable for arcing tomorrow. It stopped as soon as my foot released.
 
I had something like that happen to me. I have a Lokar throttle cable and while I was on Brice road at the Mopar Nationals I goosed the throttle and then the whole car went black. I'm not saying the lights went out I mean no power at all. I immediately got out of the car and looked underneath at the cable that goes to my battery in the trunk and it looked fine. That's when someone yelled out you've got a fire under the hood!!!!! I looked through the hood scoop and I could see the fire. I got my screwdriver to open the dezus fasteners I had all but one off when someone almost snapped my hood trying to lift it up before I had all of the fasteners off. I looked and saw that it was that big of a fire so I reached into my interior and grabbed a bottle of water that I had but before I could use it Smokey the Bear decided to use his brand new fire extinguisher that he got for Christmas what a mess.......and the it started to rain LOL. Turns out that that braided steel cable was rubbing through the main bulkhead power and naturally on the WRONG side of the fusable link. The last thing my wife said to me before I left was "do you want to take this electrical tape? " I almost didn't take it but I just threw it in my box. I used all of it taping up the bulkhead wires. Thought I was out of the woods until I tried to start the engine. I went to pump the gas and the pedal went to the floor. It seems that cable made ground at the pedal and fried the little ball off of the end. I tried everything to attach that cable (almost blew the engine up using small vise grips. In the end I used a small turnbuckle. I only was able to get about a quarter pedal travel and it was STIFF but it got be back to the hotel. I bought another harness at the track the next day.
 
Its my belief that 99% of these electrical problems stem from non factory add ons.
When we see pics of melted bulkhead connections, head light connecters, and such, we cant know what was the root cause.
I witnessed the cb radio era, the fog light era ( most of that was 100% junk in a box ), and the jukebox era which hasn't ended. So many of these cars have suffered through that and fender benders too. Contact lugs will snap off the back of the sealed beam bulbs, lighting wires get pinched, on and on.
Today we can add aftermarket throttle cables to the list of root causes. Good luck with it.
 
I just went through the accelerator cable rubbed through the wires at the firewall connection, luckily it was the engine side. Stupid way to run it.

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I hope that's not a compression fitting I see on that brake line! Hate to see the wiring fixed only to have a collision due to a brake line!
 
No put in one piece lines now, very conscience since the fire. Really glad I had a fire extinguisher.
 
This is the third time in the last few months I have read about the same problem, really seems like a issue.
 
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