Reply to: RE>Electrical Systems
Its really amazing what an otherwise sane human being will do when
confronted with a virgin Lucas electrical system. I regularly encounter
situations where someone just twisted and taped a bunch of wires together,
noticed it working for the moment, and left it at that. My usual strategy is
to dedicate a weekend or two to just tidying up. You can do wonders with a
soldering iron, a roll of electrical tape and some assorted shrink tubing!
If the damage is too extensive, the thing to do, is bite the bullet and buy
a new wiring harness. Then all the color codes will be right, the insulation
whole, the connectors new and shiny.... Of course, your new harness won't have
any instructions, but I've found that with the repair-manual schematic in front
of me, I can label all the ends ( masking tape and felt marker ), in about an
evening. This while watching TV! The
last time I did this was with my MGA. The old harness didn't want to creep
through the hole in the firewall, so I just cut it in half there, disconnected
everything, and threw it away, making sure to save all the Lucas Bullet
connectors. None of this "label every wire as you take it off" crap!
One failing of the older Lucas electrical systems, was the "two-fuse"
philosophy. The fuse box had two fuses, one for the horn, the other for
EVERYTHING ELSE. So if your headlight shorted out, the WHOLE CAR DIED.
Fix? Depends on how fussy you are about originality. You can stick individual
fuses in the circuits, in tubular fuse holders, or you can just cross your
fingers and hope for the best. That's what I do. I suppose I'll be sorry
about that some day....
- Jerry Kaidor
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