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The Hazards of a bad ground

philman

Jedi Knight
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I was doing a smoke test on my wiring harness this afternoon and let the smoke out of my distributor wiring. Also the braided oil line to my oil pressure guage got warm and the alternator smoked a little.

I moved the engine ground strap from the K-Frame to the car frame and all is ok now (as far as I can tell without starting the engine).

I think the only harm I did was melting the ground wire from my distributor harness, the effects of sending the starting current through a 20 guage (or so) wire. The optical sensor on the distributor checks out fine and the center coil terminal sparks appropriately.
 
Pretty good Don. My low power test (using a 3 amp power supply) went fine. I didn't have any problems until I went to full power with a battery.
 
Omitting the body ground is also a good way to test the endurance of choke cables (who knew they could glow?) and for taking some of the spring out of the hairspring in the mechanical speedometers.
 
<span style="font-size: 26pt">Oh, I completely forgot. It was so pretty i snapped a photo.
</span>


TR6Fire.png
 
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