Quoting Tburke4@aol.com:
> The Spitfire is a 1980.
That's pretty modern for a spitty!
> And the radio is an 8-Track, so neither one is what
> you would call modern (neither am I, for that matter). The radio and heater
> are both disconnected now. What I am trying to figure out is how and where to
> test the wire that feeds juice to the turn sigs, wipers, etc.? And which wire
> that is??
If you mail me in a week I'll have the diagrams handy. I composed a lengthy
reply about this this morning but I think my webmail threw it away as I didn't
see it crop up again on the group.
1) put the key in the position that should allow the indicators to work
2) put the black wire of the tester on some bare metal on the engine.
3) put the red on each side of the fuse
(if you haven't got a tester, a 12v bulb with a couple of bits of wire sodlered
to it works for this)
you should get one of three scenarios:
a) both sides are off
This suggests the problem is that no juice is getting to that fuse. Check the
wire between that fuse and the battery. Generally this wire will go to the
solenoid. The solenoid doesn't do anything in this circuit, it's just a handy
place to screw a bunch of terminals to. Check the wire itself, and the
connections. Maybe clean them with some fine abrasive paper or scrape the crud
off with a screwdriver.
b) one side is hot, the other is not
This suggests the fuse really is blown or there is a bad contact at the fusebox.
check there is not too much cruddy build-up on the contacts for the fuse in
the fusebox, nor on the connectors going into and out of the fuse box for that
fuse.
c) both sides are hot
This implies the problem is on the far side of the fuse box from the battery -
at a guess without the diagrams, this leads to that multi-connector, and to the
gauges.
Since ALL those different things are out, I'm expecting (a) to be the case.
Another thing: did you know about the difference between UK and US fuse ratings?
UK ratings state the current at which the fuse will blow, US ratings state the
current that the fuse will happily carry forever. So if you take out a UK 15
amp fuse, you should ask for a fuse with a 15 amp blow - it'll probably be more
like a 7-amp fuse. There's info about this on the internet somewhere. A quick
search turned up http://www.jag-lovers.org/xk-lovers/library/fuses.html again;
mail me in a week when I'm back in England if you've not fixed it by then, and
I'll look in my literature. If you have all the right fuses in, you should
never get any melting wires.
Another thing: have you tried that 8-track 'on the bench' with a 12v power
supply? It's possible that it's broken and is sucking all the current it can
get. That's bad.
Good luck!
Steve
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