Shorted and burned the wire soon as i hooked it up. You can see where it burned out. Can anyone see how i hooked it up wrong?

I have the black fusible link right behind the red battery terminal wire. Was i supposed to put it on the other post/nut right next to that one?

 

 

 

 

I would posit that you have a short or improper connection in your wiring harness somewhere. My first suspect would be reversed connections at the alternator.

Do you know how to use a multimeter for resistance readings?

I dont. I can take an image of the alternator though. Not sure if it helps? One of the nuts toward the bottom was loose. i drew a circle in black around it. 

Maybe this is the culprit. New alternator with the new connector type and i did use the voltage reg blockoff

It would probably work a lot better with white/red wire mounted to the B terminal.

With where the wire is currently mounted, you have a dead short when you plug in your fusible link. At least you know what that looks like now.

Don't worry. If you haven't made a bonehead mistake sometime in your life, you're not really working on your car.

 

There's a forest of burning smoking wires out there.  Scary.

 

thanks! i assume this was the issue then. i moved that wire to B terminal like said. 

The item in at top, condensor?, it has a wire with fork on other end. I have left it where it was original with other

wire in black circle. Will that be an issue?

Edited October 9, 20213 yr by Wally

4 minutes ago, Wally said:

thanks! i assume this was the issue then. i moved that wire to B terminal like said. 

The item in at top, condensor?, it has a wire with fork on other end. I have left it where it was original with other

wire in black circle. Will that be an issue?

 

The forked lug on the condensor should be connected at the B terminal with the white/red wire.

That might be confusing.  There's a forked lug on the condenser case too.  The case of the condenser goes to ground.  The guts get the positive. 

My first experience with positive and negative was when I was installing a radio in my car.  It came with a condenser and I asked my father how it was supposed to be connected.  He is an electronics engineer.  He told me to connect the case to positive and the free wire to ground (pretty pretty pretty sure that's what he said).  It blew the guts out in my face like a firecracker.  Ha ha ha hah.  Had to go all the way to Radio Shack to get a new one.  

 

This thought crossed my mind.  Positive terminals/wires should never ever be connected to the case of anything.  Cases and covers and housings are always ground.

Edited October 10, 20213 yr by Zed Head

25 minutes ago, Zed Head said:

This thought crossed my mind.  Positive terminals/wires should never ever be connected the case of anything.  Cases and covers and housings are always ground.

https://www.restore-an-old-car.com/positive-ground-cars.html

So there.   

That's not obvious!  

Haha!! No, not at all.

Apparently it was popular with most of the British sports cars up through the sixties? I was thinking that maybe you had one of those in the family that your dad worked on a lot. 

Actually he did have an Austin Healey before he had a family.  Positive ground? 

But he had plenty of good old America iron after that and did all his own maintenance.  I think he was creating a "teaching" moment.