Here's one for electrical gurus. Help.

[adriver]

Quick and dirty prints uploaded. I think they are right.
Give me you best guesses.
I may have a charging problem still.
I don't like the charging load on my ammeter.
Will work on that this weekend.
But the car runs fine now.

So my original wiring smoked. The car died and when I went to crank it the smoke came out.

The "blue" under the hood wiring was fried in the bundle. (The "run" circuit).
I had the electric choke wires tied in to the run circuit and that wire was gone.
The heat melted some other wires in the firewall bundle.
Strangely enough the fuse-able link checked good with a meter but looked hot.
I've got garbage cans full of used harnesses and I've cobbled together new wiring trying to keep the "important" wires close to the original colors with upgrades.

View attachment 1715044370


I got new power and run pulled in and by passed the problem bulkhead connections with the "important" wires.
(2 "Power" and 1 run.)

View attachment 1715044371



I put in a new ignition switch a few weeks ago for no particular reason.
Just figured it was time. The original was.....old.
And since I was doing this anyway, I hard wired the new ignition switch in.
That eliminated one more bad connection under the dash.
The car side plastic was broken anyway.

ALL CONNECTIONS are crimped AND soldered.

New fuse-able link with ring terminals.

Before making it all neat, I wanted to test run it.
It wouldn't start and when I did get it running the timing was off the scale retarded.
Guessing 20 degrees retarded from TDC at idle.
Ran it back with a timing light to 10 degrees advanced at idle and now it is fine.
I drive this car everyday long distance for 15 years without touching the timing.

What would do this?????
Better voltage???

Boxes have never made a difference in timing like this.
So it has to be something with the new wiring.
Right?
This car requires very little maintenance.
I'm running out of good junk yard 4 pin boxes so I'm going backwards to 5 pin boxes which I have more of.
(We know the new boxes are rubbish.)

Prints to follow in next post.

 

[adriver]

This second print has stuff that my car never had.
I've Xed it out.

If you ever are looking for it that splice of two red and 3 black wires in the top of this print are in the left side wire bundle behind and next to the instrument cluster.

This is about where my timing mark was at idle after the new wiring.
What in the world?

My new wiring to the choke.

Recently went back in time to a 5 pin box.

I've run the battery connections like this for years.
Found it to work good.

 

[67Dart273]

Here's the thing. "We ain't there." Not tryin to be mean. When you modify from factory, then it's difficult or impossible to follow what you did with wiring changes or / what caused this

TIMING: You may have reversed the pickup wires in your repair???

So far as the harness, this can kick your ***. Some short somewhere starts "meltage" and once several wires are welded/ meltaged/ tied together, then all kinds of stupid stuff happens

There are several circuits in the harness that are NOT very well or at all protected.........except by the fuse link

The blue "ignition run" which provides "key on" power to ANYTHING under the hood such as alternator field, ignition, smog doo dads, and so on. IS NOT FUSED

The alternator "charge" , field wires, and ammeter wires are NOT fused, other than fuse link

I once had a loaner car while my RR was in the shop after some girl rear ended the thing. The loaner, one morning, dropped a diode down inside, stopped the alternator. When I messed with it to see what was wrong, I just stood there "in awe" (and shock pun intended) as the entire underhood harness fizzled, smoked, and burned all the way around, and then..........popped the fuse link

 

[adriver]

Here's the thing. "We ain't there." Not tryin to be mean. When you modify from factory, then it's difficult or impossible to follow what you did with wiring changes or / what caused this

TIMING: You may have reversed the pickup wires in your repair???

So far as the harness, this can kick your ***. Some short somewhere starts "meltage" and once several wires are welded/ meltaged/ tied together, then all kinds of stupid stuff happens

There are several circuits in the harness that are NOT very well or at all protected.........except by the fuse link

The blue "ignition run" which provides "key on" power to ANYTHING under the hood such as alternator field, ignition, smog doo dads, and so on. IS NOT FUSED

The alternator "charge" , field wires, and ammeter wires are NOT fused, other than fuse link

I once had a loaner car while my RR was in the shop after some girl rear ended the thing. The loaner, one morning, dropped a diode down inside, stopped the alternator. When I messed with it to see what was wrong, I just stood there "in awe" (and shock pun intended) as the entire underhood harness fizzled, smoked, and burned all the way around, and then..........popped the fuse link

Yes, that's why I went to the trouble of showing the modified prints.

So reversing the pickup leads could do it?
That's helpful to know.
I didn't know it it would even run if they were backwards.
So I wired it as all the 5 pin plugs I had were set up to the pins.
It's a reluctor.
But I ASSUMED it was a polarized plug for a reason.
But all it dos is generate a current so I was wondering if it wouldn't make any difference.
Tell you what, I'll reverse them this weekend an let you know the results.

 

[adriver]

Hum.
If the under hood blue run circuit is not protected by the link (It and other wires are in series with the link by way of the ignition switch ), I don't think it's protected by a fuse either.

 

[TrailBeast]

removed for simplicity

Hey Del, I have been trying to message you and say hi but your inbox is full.
Hope you are well, and it's nice to have you back.

 

[adriver]

 

[67Dart273]

Hey Del, I have been trying to message you and say hi but your inbox is full.
Hope you are well, and it's nice to have you back.

Hi buddy. It's the "new improved software." Evidently 15 messages fills it up. Try again if you like

 

[adriver]

Also since Dell has pointed out the the blue "run" wire is not "protected", I'm on the way to work on the car and undo something I did in my rewire after the smoke.
The original prints show it as a 12 AWG dark blue until it passed through the bulkhead in the original pre-burn configuration.
Once it get to the engine firewall it became 16 AWG.
I "upgraded" the engine side alternator field wire to 10 AWG in my rewired prints to the field.
I'm thinking this would not be the thing to do.
I'm convinced that the heaver wire inside the car was saved by being heaver than what burned in the engine compartment.
I'm not going to install a fuse in the run circuit unless someone points to a reason to do so.
I guess Chrysler did not protect that run wiring for some reason.
I'll also check on the possibility of a backwards reluctor wiring.
Chow.

 

[DDodger]

They were cheap is why. Jus' da' simple

 

[adriver]

Ok, I've downgraded back to 18 AWG on the firewall run of the blue "run" stuff.
And I put a new voltage regulator on because the old one was twitching at idle.
The new BWD voltage regulator is rock solid, albeit made in China.

To review:
No modifications were done prior to the wires going up in smoke.
Best guess is that's exactly what caused them to burn.
The factory wiring had 45 years of hard use on it.

Now,I don't think the weird timing issue after I put new wiring in was my fault exactly.
(I'm trying to find a reason to blame Dell but can't come up with one since he wasn't there.)

Read on.

I'm real big about drawing new prints when wiring is modified. My current job drives me nuts. They move wires on relays to new contacts and just relabel the wires. In my previous avionics work engineering would mod the prints to match mods.

So, while I have not done dozens of cars, I have done this before on OTHER CARS by the numbers and got thrown a curve by Chrysler.
See?

Here's the harness I made up from scrap to replace the burned factory harness.
My harness changed the timing by what? 30 degrees?

Here's an unmolested factory harness from my pile of scrap.

View attachment 1715045238

And here's the factory original wiring that got melted which had been in the car 45 years. (unmodified)
I checked it.
Which I did NOT check before because making a new harness........because who knew?
Do my eyes deceive me? Am I losing my mind?

 

[67Dart273]

LOL I can't tell what's up there. There HAS been a few guys who seem to think that some of the pickups were actually reversed. If that might be the case, and a good idea, anyhow, check "rotor phasing." Google it Lots of info on it. Evidently SOME Mopar distributors were "off" in the distributor itself, IE the rotor/ pickup relationship. Someone was selling reluctors with modified keyways.

Modern problems............

 

[adriver]

LOL I can't tell what's up there. There HAS been a few guys who seem to think that some of the pickups were actually reversed. If that might be the case, and a good idea, anyhow, check "rotor phasing." Google it Lots of info on it. Evidently SOME Mopar distributors were "off" in the distributor itself, IE the rotor/ pickup relationship. Someone was selling reluctors with modified keyways.

Modern problems............

That and you are (were) exactly correct.
This car came from the factory in 73 with the pickup wires backwards.
(Does it really matter?)
Note the brown with white tracer in the last pictures.
The "male" prong is supposed to go to one of the "forward/big end" sockets in the ECU plug.
This one went to the "rear/small end".
There are two sockets that are sort of further away from the front three.
Hey. I'm not an expert the black magic "PFM" of the ECU.
(I sent you a bad orange one years ago to do a postmortem on it).
My head is spinning.....FBO, HEI, FBO, HEI, FBO, HEI.
I've just been all over threads again trying to figure out what to do about my lack of good "old stock" Chrysler ECU's.
Plug and play and the warranty sounds nice on the FBO.
Trailbeast has some post where he talks about swapping the reluctor wires and phasing.
I put the wires back like they came in 73, backwards.
Hope that is OK.

 

[TrailBeast]

That and you are (were) exactly correct.
This car came from the factory in 73 with the pickup wires backwards.
(Does it really matter?) It does if the rotor is too far away from the terminal inside the cap that the spark is supposed to be jumping to when the spark fires.
Usually we just go by if the engine runs right or not, but getting into it beyond that is a pretty big answer and best looked up for further information on checking and/or changing it.
This is a pretty good article on it.
Rotor Phasing

Note the brown with white tracer in the last pictures.
The "male" prong is supposed to go to one of the "forward/big end" sockets in the ECU plug.
This one went to the "rear/small end".
There are two sockets that are sort of further away from the front three.
Hey. I'm not an expert the black magic "PFM" of the ECU.
(I sent you a bad orange one years ago to do a postmortem on it).
My head is spinning.....FBO, HEI, FBO, HEI, FBO, HEI.
I've just been all over threads again trying to figure out what to do about my lack of good "old stock" Chrysler ECU's.
Plug and play and the warranty sounds nice on the FBO.
Trailbeast has some post where he talks about swapping the reluctor wires and phasing.
I put the wires back like they came in 73, backwards.
Hope that is OK.

Sorry if the red sucks

 

[adriver]

Sorry if the red sucks

Drill the hole about around number 1 on the top is what he is saying in the article?

 

[adriver]

 

[TrailBeast]

Drill the hole about around number 1 on the top is what he is saying in the article?

It's a lot easier to mark the distributor housing straight down from a wire tower and use a timing light on that cylinders wire with the cap off to see where the flash happens.
If it flashes right inline or a little after with the mark on the housing, then there ya go.
Of course you want that plug wire going to ground elsewhere while it's off.

 

[KitCarlson]

It is real simple to check pickup wiring polarity.
1. Check ignition timing at idle with light, assuming 10 deg BTDC.
2. Set the engine crank to 10 deg BTDC.
3. Pop the distributor cap, check were a reluctor tooth is in relation to pickup nub. They should nearly line up, the tooth just a bit on the way past center of nub
4. If the pickup nub is between reluctor teeth, the wiring is wrong in polarity.