[Mgs] Electrical Nightmare

Thu Jan 16 12:41:07 MST 2020

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>
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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