I'm not sure why I feel the need to admit this to the world. This is the third season of driving my '40 after about 16 years of off and on building. I'm not going to blame trying to do complex stuff in the wee hours of the morning but here's the latest brilliant move I have discovered in the shakedown of my project; Melted wiring. Nope, I'm not having any over current or short circuit problems. Those are the kind of things that you really can't plan for sometimes. No, this time, genius here decided that when I was wiring my truck, it would be a great idea to leave myself plenty of slack in the harness that went down to the starter. After all, why wrestle with the connections while holding the starter partially in place when, if you had enough slack in the harness, you would wire the freakin thing from the comfort of your living room. EXHAUST MANIFOLDS, that's why. I was flopping around under the truck looking for a rattle, actually more of a clunk, that has been evading diagnosis and I happened to glimpse up over the starter. What I saw was about 4 inches of perfectly welded together wire and convoluted sleeving. Fortunately, nothing was near the point of shorting but the big idiot bulb came on and a warning horn was blasting away in my head the second I saw it . I dropped the starter and decided that I could clip a good 4-5 inches out of this thing and still have slack. So, that's what I did. This time, I put the starter on a jack stand in about the right orientation and wired it up from there. I can't believe I was dumb enough to just stuff the extra harness up there and bolt that thing in last time. I really hope no one else is afflicted with the same level of brilliance that I have
It takes a big man to admit he's wrong! But to post it on here?? Get ready for some fatherly advice!! At the same time, it's not like you decided one day to set your truck on fire- it was a mistake; I think you might be human! or as my Dad used to say " Just another Bozo on the bus". We all get to wear the pointed hat sometime.
This has the potential to be a long thread. Several days ago I got my heap running after a long illness (the heap), filled up the radiator and went for a test ride. Got back and it was steaming hot. Came back out after awhile to refill the radiator, no cap. Crap, must have left it off when I filled it up. Can't find it in the bowls of the engine bay, not on the work bench, not near the garden hose... Finally locate it about 200 yards down the street. Put it back on, go for another jaunt, overheats again! Take a better look at the cap, guess I ran it over the first time, post is bent. Let it cool off again, off to parts store for new cap. Total cost: $5. Elapsed time: half a day.
If I had a nickel for every goofy mistake I've made working on cars, I could afford another project!!
I knew this one was gonna fill up fast! Ask me how I know that... My first boss told me " Son, if you ain't breakin' anything, you ain't learnin' anything. wich means you ain't fixin' anything!"
I guess that even though I have been wrenching for the better part of 50 years, 99% of my experience is on vehicles that have been designed and engineered by the guys in Detroit. That said, if a body was to simply replace worn or damaged stuff and put the car back together the way it was designed to go, there wouldn't be any problems with clearances, rattles, wire harness routing etc. Building a hot rod from scratch presents a whole 'nother set of issues where you have to think and behave like an engineer (or maybe even smarter than that). These are the things that come back to bite you. I guess all in all, I have done pretty well with the truck, everything works, and I've got a to do list but it's not stuff that's unsafe, or keeps me from enjoying it. I'm at the noise/vibration/harshness/aesthetics point in the project. But I'm a fussy guy and to me the truck represents my abilities to anyone who looks at it. That's why I felt like such a total doofus when I spotted the wiring gaffe.
Funny thing about learning. The only way to learn is to fail. Either you or someone else has to have something to fail so that they know the boundaries of the project. I got the failure part down pat. Now if I could just lock down that learning part.
try grounding a wrench to the hot lead on the starter with the wrench across your gold wedding ring.... 2 seconds of spark and that ring was so hot I had to pull it off and I blistered my finger all the way around where the ring was...good times
Don't be so hard on yourself....at least you discovered your blunder before the wires shorted, and started a fire. And I doubt that there are many on this forum that haven't done something similar. And I'll bet that you won't ever do that again!
I look at it like this: When everything goes right there are few memories and it becomes kind of ho hum. Usually when things go wrong, eventually there is a great laugh along with bunches of memories.
Use some steel tubing to route and shield your battery cables and wiring. This curved tubing shield is a factory piece from a mid-'70s Pontiac that was used to route the wiring at the rear of the driver's side cylinder head. I tweaked the mounting bracket a little and bolted it up to the front of the head using one of the header bolts. This one bolts to the motor mount, it's essentially a copy of a factory cable shield used on '67 Ram Air GTOs made from stainless steel tubing that I flared on the ends using a ball peen hammer. The Ram Air and HO cars used bigger free-flowing exhaust manifolds that required a different starter cable routing than the standard GTOs. These cable routing shields kept my starter cable from getting me into trouble.
When I done my chevelle I put 2 blocks on the fire wall, 1 with a 3/8's stud and 1 small single post terminal block. Made 1 short battery cable, starter to 3/8's, and 1 for the small post. I run a insulated clamp on a bell housing bolt that they will both fit through to hold them away from the headers. I can take them loose and drop the starter and it gives me a place to hook my starter bump switch to adjust valves. As for the stupid stunts, I could write a best seller.
Nice work! I have done similar stuff routing hoses, wires and such, I just totally spaced on the starter cables.
Life holds two choices, either do things and make mistakes, or go sit on your hands in the corner. I tend to do things and try to keep up fixing my mistakes!
Get one of these, or pull a disconnect weaterpack from any latemodel and splice it in, most come with mounting brackets that mount on christmas tree clips.http://m.summitracing.com/search?keyword=Starter wiring disconnect And some of this http://m.summitracing.com/parts/the-14010
There are only two people in this world who don't make mistakes. One is GOD, and the other one is a Liar.... Good to see you are learning and ,by your blunder, you are also teaching the rest of us.... Thank You LW
I put a Ford solenoid on the fender or firewall, then run all the hot leads to it, with only a hot cable and starter solenoid activation wire actually running down to the Chevy starter. That way, all my electrical that would normally connect at the Chevy starter is now up on the fender or firewall, easy to get to, and not in danger of melting from exhaust heat.
Years ago when I learning carpentry my mentor told me, it is not that good carpenters don't make mistakes . They just know how to fix them.
you know, the only people that don't make mistakes are the ones that don't do anything.....but that may be a mistake also..........
You're not the only one. Sometimes when confronted with a problem, in a flash of brilliance I will come up with a solution and think "why not?" Later, I often discover "why not." When that happens I file it away in my head for future reference so that it wasn't a complete waste.