I didnt realise how bad the electrical was when I bought my truck. The guy put in a radio and hacked up the wiring making horrilbe splices everywhere. I also didnt realise that the bulkhead connections at the firewall at one point had a fire, or at least melted the connection for the red and black 10guage wires. He did a shoddy job at replacing them.

Recently my guages stopped working and more recently my rt rear tailights/indicators werent working. I came across this article and figured this is exactly my problem and figured if I follow it to the T this should fix my issues. So I got rid of the charred and somewhat melted bulkhead connections and spliced all the wires together. Then I ran the black 10guage cable like in Diagram B (on the 2nd link) with the fuseable links and all.

Now I connect the battery and tested all the lights and they work (brake, reverse, indicators, headlights, ebrake etc..). Then I tried to crank it and saw some sparks from the positive lead on the battery. Once that was done the headlights do not work anymore but everything else seems ok. Anybody know whats wrong? i dont want to crank it again and burn down my home. Not sure what I missed, please advise...

sorry for the long post, just wanted to give history and explaination.

http://www.madelectrical.com/electrical ... uges.shtml
http://www.madelectrical.com/electrical ... ges2.shtml

Check the batt. ground and make sure it is metal to metal and no grease or anything.........should eliminate that quirk. Might even fix it.
max

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1966 barracuda 360
1964 signet conv. 170 turbo
Bonneville or Bust 2012

Clean the positive terminal of the battery and the positive cable. The sparks were from a poor contact between the cable and battery.

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Joshua

Great thanks for the suggestions. I only had the battery cables loosely connected in case something started to fry i could disconnect quickly. Yes once i put them on tightly everything is fine. I might go buy a new head light to see if that works or burns out. Thanks alot guys.

Only other thing is it seems to idle very high even though the idle screw is almost all the way out, any suggestions? I might troll the forums to see if others had this. Again Thank you much!!!

If the new headlights don't solve the problem then try the dimmer switch on the floor.

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85 d-100 HEI 2BBl
06 Toyota Corrola

Tried new headlight but still no good. Bought a new 2 guage cable for the positive battery lead, no more sparks. Adjusted the idle and seems better.

When I tested the turn signals the car wasnt running because I was in an enclosed garage. today I started it and had someone look at the lights for me, they were very faint, they dont look like they work at all. Any ideas? could this be voltage regulator?

Generally dim lights indicate a poor ground. Make sure all grounding for each light assembly is good by; disassembly, cleaning surfaces & connections. Also, be sure that any bulb sockets are clean. Replace if necessary, their inexpensive.

After cleaning all connections, and sockets you could install higher candle power bulbs. Dan has published a list of bulb part numbers here on the site that will work well & not over tax your electrical system.

Also cleaning your lenses & reflector surfaces will greatly help. Dan explains it all here.

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC

Thats a very good write up, I have a feeling it might be related to bad ground. Any info on checking grounds?

This is something that came out in a tech article alert from chrysler in about 1966.

The car needs to be grounded in three places.

1. head to firewall copper braided strap.

2. block to firewall copper braided strap.

3. neg. terminal of battery to radiator support.

Wish I could tell you this will fix it ;but I can tell you I have used this system with success 90% of the time. bright head lights dash lights etc. Just make sure the surfaces are clean and free of paint.
regards max

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1966 barracuda 360
1964 signet conv. 170 turbo
Bonneville or Bust 2012

4. and of course neg. terminal of the battery to the block.

All these conversions were mostly done at the dealership.

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1966 barracuda 360
1964 signet conv. 170 turbo
Bonneville or Bust 2012

One thing I did not see mentioned about the tail lights, make sure the bed is grounded. I have seen trucks that due to rust, repaint, and or age the bed only had a partial ground. Search for instructions on how to do a voltage drop test from the battery to the bed. All you need is a long jumper wire and a voltage meter.

TopHat

I checked the grounds and they look good. The one from the radiator to neg battery cable I replaced. The headlights started working after I tried removing the headlight switch, i tried to pry it off then gave up and put it back together and they started working. I think there was alot of crud in the switch itself.

The only issues I have now is when the headlights are on the tailights do not go on. I still have an issue with my right tailight/indicator (not a bad bulb) and now my dome light stays on always. not sure what to do about dome light or the others, any suggestions>?

1974stepside:

[quote]and now my dome light stays on always.[/quote]

Most likely your door-jamb switch is shorting, or the wire has come off of it. Remove the kick panel and feel around. Those switches are cheep to replace if needed.

If the switch is good, than you have a short between the light, and switch. Current flows to the light, than down to the switch, than to ground when the door opens. Kind of like a “Kilowatt Drainâ€￾… LAL Luckily you only have two doors to play with…


[quote]The headlights started working after I tried removing the headlight switch, i tried to pry it off then gave up and put it back together and they started working.[/quote]

I bet that the contacts to the light switch are corroded for whatever reason, who knows. By prying, and moving those connections you have reestablished a better connection. I would recommend a second attempt to un-plug the wire harness so you can give those contacts a good cleaning. By doing so you will lessen heat build-up. Remember corroded connections add resistance, and resistance causes heat.

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC

You were right about the corroded connections. I traced the taillight then cut the connectors and spliced the wires together by twisting and using heat shrink and they are good now. Also found that the cluster console wasnt properly grounded.

The door jam works, just wasnt properly grounded either. Now the only issue is that the taillights do not come on when the headlights are on but I will trace them out tonight and try to clean the contact points like you said.

Thank you all.

Ahhh, progress 1974stepside! That is good. And, no cost repairs to boot, can’t beat it.

The problem doesn’t seem so big now that you can see the light at the end of the truck...

A restoration is just a million little repair jobs, and a couple of bushels of 100 dollar bills. Once it is all done, it’s not so bad… LOL
That headlight switch has a molded multi connection cap I suspect. If you can drop the switch down from under the dash for better access, and pop off that cap; I would remove each individual wire from its housing, one at a time, to clean it, or if you have the proper connectors replace them if needed.

One can slide a small screwdriver along side the female brass connector to depress its locking tab, and it should pull right out. After you remove a few of these connectors from their housing, the task becomes second nature. The trick is to have a small enough screwdriver to easily slide into the housing. I ground an old screw driver down just for such repairs.

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC