Just thought I would relate an interesting little wiring issue I ran into
the other day...
I am a fairly new MGB owner, and thus have not driven too much at night,
nor have I had a chance to fully appreciate the finer points of the
electrical system......well, the other night I was driving home from Vermont
listening to the radio - and noticing that I couldn't see any of the
guages. It being the first time when I had driven with it really dark,
I assumed that a fuse must be blown, so I filed it away to look at later
(low priority).
So I'm cruising along when suddenly the radio sputters and quits, but
suddenly the dash lights are on for a moment. That it was back to the
radio as usual. This happened randomly for varying lengths of time all
the way home - and of course it only happened during the best songs, never
the commercials. I figured it was a loose connection or a bad ground somewhere,
but no amount of tapping or bumps in the road seemed to affect it.
Anyways, to make a long story short, after a bit of wire sleuthing I
discovered that the PO had wired the radio's ground into the red/white
dash light connector in the radio bay. I guess the radio was getting it's
ground through the filaments of the bulbs? I should have guessed this
based on the duct tape/hot melt glue wiring I had already corrected, but
this was certainly an unusual symptom....
Can't wait til my first drive in the rain ;-)
Jon Swanson
'73 MGB
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