[Mgs] FW: Electrical Nightmare

Thu Jan 16 14:27:04 MST 2020

IF you are willing to put in the time and effort, you can build your own
wiring harness.  I did that on a 67.  I followed the wiring diagram, used
the correct colors, but - I put in a 10 fuse fuse box (I think - its been a
while).  Everything has its own fuse sized accordingly.  The lights, horns,
blinkers, electric fan, etc.  took my untold hours to figure it out.

Wiring is actually simple -  power to fuse to switch to device to ground.
That's it.  Pretty much everything follows that.  Do the circuits one at a
time and it will be easy, use twist ties to hold everything together, then
tie wraps, then cut those off and wrap it.

From: Mgs <mgs-bounces at autox.team.net> On Behalf Of Barrie Robinson via Mgs
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2020 2:06 PM
To: mgs at autox.team.net
Subject: Re: [Mgs] Electrical Nightmare

Hello folks,

I feel oh sort of superior! An unusual feeling in the MG world as I am a
novice.  When I built my MGB GT V8 I was determined to make it bullet proof
even if it meant not being "original".  There is a chap, whose name escapes
me, who put out an electrical wiring harness design which was "point to
point".   He was a big time engineer in Triumph so I followed his design and
actually bought parts form him.   It had a central "control box" with
solenoids, fuses etc etc.   So that's what I have in my GT.   Bags of fuses
and there are no branches causing confusion.    It is not original true, but
then it is bulletproof.   Probably no more expensive than buying a harness
from British Wiring or others if you do it yourself.

I have his article, complete with diagrams, from the British V8 outfit which
was pure MGs but now any Brit V8 !!

Barrie.

On 1/16/2020 2:41 PM, Hans Duinhoven via Mgs wrote:

Looking to your picture, I think it is better to do a thorough wiring job. 

It looks, like the car has been exposed to "nature" for many times. 

This means, a lot of contacts are suspect of being poor or bad. 

So besides true fault finding, I'd dismantle all wiring and get all contacts
cleaned.

Clean all bullet connectors and replace all their interconnects.

Clean all other connectors and replace these when they are bad.

I did this with my BGT in 1996 and after that job I never had any electrical
failures, besides a faulty alternator (diode pack) and starter solenoid,
where the nut did not keep the 12 V wires fixed anymore. 

So get a matching electrical diagram of the car's built year.

The Haynes MGB manual always helped me out.

Hope this helps for the long term.

Cheers,

Hans

'71 BGT

Van: Mgs [mailto:mgs-bounces at autox.team.net] Namens Max Heim via Mgs
Verzonden: donderdag 16 januari 2020 20:20
Aan: Michael MacLean
CC: MGs
Onderwerp: Re: [Mgs] Electrical Nightmare

I think you still have a ground problem. Should the steering column have a
separate ground wire on a 69? I know there is one in the turn signal
harness.

It does help to consult the wiring diagram, to figure out where the common
grounds are.

--

Max Heim

'66 MGB

On Jan 16, 2020, at 11:06 AM, Michael MacLean via Mgs <mgs at autox.team.net
<mailto:mgs at autox.team.net> > wrote:

In an earlier post I told how my tach in my 69 GT would die when the
headlights were turned on.  Someone mentioned that the tach was looking for
a ground through the light wiring for the instrument.  That turned out to be
true, somewhat.  To test this I pulled the instrument to inspect the wiring
and found what you see in the picture.  One arrow points to the ground
connection on the back of the case and the other arrow points to a common
ground just floating around behind the instrument.  For an experiment I
slipped the ground wire connector over the threaded mouting stud of the case
back and shoved the tach back into place temporarily to find out about the
missing ground theory.  It worked!  You didn't think it was going to be that
easy did you?  The light had not illuminated the instrument before either,
so after scraping and sanding the bulb hlder and the tube fitting on the
back of the tach that the bulb shoves into, the light worked too, but wait
there's more!  After this hollow victory I had to use the horn on the test
drive.  Now the horn does not work, but when I push on the steering wheel
stalk to activate the horn, the brake warning light comes on.  I just love
electrical problems.  Not in my element here.  Any ideas?

Mike MacLean

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