Regarding the thread earlier this week on backup lights, I'd like to
offer the following suggestion.
When I bought my '75 TR6 8 years ago, I discovered that the reverse lamp
wires were, strangely enough, zip cord from below the tranny cover to
somewhere behind the dash. All worked fine, however, so at the time I
left well enough alone.
When I restored the car a few years ago, I think I'd determined why
there was zip cord. Sometime before I'd bought the car there must have
been a fire. The wiring harness reverse backup wires from the tranny
reverse switch up to the main wiring harness trunk had been replaced
with zip cord. The zip cord was spliced to the remains of the original
wires at the harness main trunk and the main trunk was also burned for
some distance to the drivers side of the car.
A look at the wiring diagram for our cars will reveal that one of the
wires in this circuit is always hot when the key is on and I suspect
that the hot connector at the reverese switch had, at some point, come
loose and in contact with the tranny or body. Since our cars didn't
come from the factory with fusible links and this circuit is fused
pretty high, the wire got red hot, burning off the insulation for
several feet!
For anyone doing any work in this area of the car, or anyone else I
might add, I highly recommend adding a separate inline fuse to the hot
line in this circuit. The fuseholder can be placed out of sight on the
top of the tranny tunnel near the heater outlet. For my car, I've added
a J overdrive and a single hot wire, fused at 5 Amps, supplies power to
both the OD and the reverse circuit. If you're only concerned about the
reverse lamps, a 2 amp fuse should work just fine. No more fires!
Gary Klein
President, TRiumphs Around the Chesapeake, Ltd. TRAC
www.tracltd.org
'75 TR6 Digest
Severn, MD
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