How To: C15a Wire-3 restoration

[Phil Waterman]

Hi All



WARNING - BE SURE TO SECURE WIRING HARNESS

Yes, using all caps is like shouting, and regarding this warning I am, I learned the hard way. While looking for photos for this thread found the photos of the wiring harness FIRE I had in a freshly made wiring harness. The cause of the fire was simple I had not yet secured the harness with the clamps it shifted was shorted out burned out the harness. Nearly burned through a rubber gas line. I could have lost the truck, the other two trucks parked in the shop and the shop.

Pat 12 Cable Fire Sept 07 018.jpg Top to bottom, speedo cable, fuel line, main harness, and bottom battery cable.

Be sure as you go along to secure the wiring harness with cable clamps, that's what all those 1/4 holes are for. Also watch very carefully your routing in the area around the brake master cylinder, starter, speedometer cable and fuel line.


What happened was I was in a hurry to test the truck and hooked every thing up and drove it around quite a bit great fun. Figured I'd get around to putting in all the clamps. What happened was the speedometer cable shifted shorted out to the brake light switch on the master cylinder. That heated up and melted the insulation on the main power going to the starter that that lit up the speedo cable which was tight with the main wiring harness running forward to come up to the dash. Resultant damage was a foot of the main harness had to be cut out and replaced.

All because I didn't take the time to put clamps on everything before powering the system up.



Now back to Jordan's excellent restoration thread with a question. What are you going to use as overload protection?


Cheers Phil