[Mgs] FW: Electrical Nightmare

Max Heim mvheim at sonic.net
Thu Jan 16 15:04:03 MST 2020 

That’s admirable, but let’s keep this in perspective.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with 50-year-old wiring. The copper is good, and the insulation is usually in pretty good shape, too, except maybe one or two runs in the engine compartment that get pretty hot. The cloth bundling may be ragged, but that has nothing to do with electrical faults.

It’s just corrosion at the junctions, and the physical condition of the female connectors, that are the issues here. Let’s not intimidate the man into thinking he needs to rewire the entire vehicle. Going through the connections is something that can be done a little at a time. Pull one, clean the male leads, smear on some dielectric grease, pop on a new female connector if warranted. They tend to be clustered in a few places — if you pull them one at a time there is less chance of misconnection.

--
Max Heim
'66 MGB

> On Jan 16, 2020, at 1:27 PM, dave via Mgs <mgs at autox.team.net> wrote:
> 
> 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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <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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>>  
>> 
>> 
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