Well, I found the reason for my glowing warning lamp. My car is
different from the Haynes diagram which should apply to it, or I'm looking
at the wrong one, or something. According to what I've seen, the ign
switched accessories should be fed through the fuse box via the white wires.
On my car, the white wire feeds the field coil of a relay which switches a
white/brown wire (going to the accessories terminal of the fuse block) to
the brown battery buss. At some point, this relay had failed, and the PO
(probably going by the same diagrammes that I was) "repaired" the problem by
jumping the white wire directly to the fuse block. Since this wiring wasn't
"stiff" enough to handle the current demands, the voltage sagged, causing
the indicator to glow. Replacing the defective relay and repairing the
wiring cured the problem.
I had some Bosch automotive relays on hand, so I used one of those, and
was quite surprised that the pin-out was identical to the Lucas, even down
to the numbering of the pins!
Now I'm wondering if there is an appropriate schematic of the wiring for
my car (77B) in perhaps a later Haynes manual? Mine is c1977, and none of
the diagrammes show such a relay... they all show the wiring going to the
fuse block directly from the ignition switch.
BTW, when splicing wiring where it can be exposed to the elements, I
crimp and solder the connection, dress it with "liquid tape", then cover it
with heat shrink. I've used this in marine applications and it works great,
never had a failure.
Thanks to those who replied to my previous post, I truly appreciate the
help.
Steve Murphy
77 MGB
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