It all worked...then I messed with it

wardkew

wardkew

Member
The horn, lights and add-on turn signals on my '31 Roadster all worked. I then replaced both battery cables which were frayed, the 50-year-old coil, and the dash wiring harness. Now, when the car is running, the horn, lights and blinkers all work. When the car is off they only work for a blink or two of the four-ways, then all die. They come back after I restart the car. I've triple checked the wiring with the wiring diagram and checked everywhere for shorts, which I can't find. I'm a a loss and ready to put the old worn out stuff back on to see if it fixes the problem. Any thoughts?
 
My thoughts would be a high resistive connection either at the Amp meter or on the terminal box. Loosen all the connections and re-tightenen them.
Good luck.
 
I have seen wiring harnesses that the terminals are crimped on the insulation --original harnesses had the terminals soldered, take a look at your dash harness.
 
Did you inadvertantly let any of the smoke out...? Once the smoke comes out, most electrical parts are no longer any good. ;)

Ask me how I know this.... :rolleyes:
 
Thanks for the inputs. They give me somewhere to start. The replacement harness came from Snyders, and appears to be decent qualty. I'll check the terminals and redo all conections. Freddie, I didn't let the smoke out...this time.
 
Ward...I replaced the wiring harness in Jippy when I converted her to 12v negative ground...along with all the bulbs, and rewired the headlights, etc. along the way. I had installed the resistor for the horn inside the left front chassis rail. It all seemed to be coming together pretty nicely, I thought, until it was finally time to hook up the battery. Maybe because this was the first old car I had worked on, I had some real trepidations about hooking up that last battery cable. After some serious psyching up, I finally leaned down in the car and just jammed the negative cable on the battery..."Damn the torpedos!", I thought, "it's got a fused connection!"

Well...apparently somewhere in Jippy's previous life someone had replaced the horn with a non-original model. I thought it looked a little funny when I pulled the can off the horn motor...it just didn't look like the pictures I had seen in all the books.

As soon as that negative cable touched the bettery terminal that damned horn started "Aaaaah-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...!" I damned near crapped my shorts...! I jumped so hard my head smacked the steering wheel, and I fell out of the drivers door on my back on the cold garage floor. Of course, as soon as I pulled the cable off the terminal the horn stopped. Took me several more tries to figure out the horn was dead shorted against the horn motor frame...it was just looking for a ground to complete the circuit! Turned out there were plastic insulators on the horn motor flange to isolate the horn from the headlight mounting bar. Once I realized I had not re-installed them correctly I was able to quickly remedy the situation.

But...that damned horn going off at 10:00 PM that December night about scared the beejeesus out of me...! I didn't let the smoke out either...

At least not that time, anyway. :D
 
Every one of those bullet or wire connectors must be soldered on a new harness installation. Always. Don't depend on crimped wire connectors for full amperage conductivity. Sometimes the connectors are just too loose or the next time the connectors have been installed by someone who has had a scrap with the spouse and has over crimped the wire terminal, inadvertently breaking individual copper wires inside the terminal.
 
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