[Mgs] FW: Electrical Nightmare

Barrie Robinson barrob at bell.net
Thu Jan 16 15:23:43 MST 2020 

Max is not wrong.   I had my Austin Healey in pieces so the wiring 
harness was out.   My wife and I used soft toothbrushes to clean the 
harness (car had been in a flood and had mud all over the place) then I 
buffed all the connector ends.   The car when finished ran like a Swiss 
sewing machine and never missed an electrical beat. It won first in the 
1989 Conclave for Austin Healeys - the Mecca for A-Hs

Oh happy days.
Barrie

On 1/16/2020 5:04 PM, Max Heim via Mgs wrote:
> 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 
>> <mailto: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]*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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>
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>
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