Hello Everyone,
I wanted to mention this "old school" method of checking your cars' electrical system (from the battery) just in case some of you didn't know about it.
If you suspect that something is draining your battery, such as a short or grounded wire somewhere on the car, an easy up-front check would be to disconnect the positive (+) wire from the battery, and then lightly touch the same (+) connector to the (+) battery terminal and look for a small spark as you touch it.......... the spark will tell you that something is shorting or draining power from the battery.
If you have a clock, it might give just the tiniest spark, that's OK......... the bigger the spark, the bigger the electrical problem..........................
This past weekend I finally got my '58 two door hardtop into the garage to begin the long task of restoration..... It's been inside a couple of days now, so I thought I would see if any of the windows would go down so I could air out the interior.......to my amazement the first window I tried went down smooth-as-silk with no hesitation or binding or anything.....I was so surprised, because when I bought the car a couple of months ago, none of the windows moved and the power seats didn't move either.......so I thought I would try a second window...... bingo-bango-bongo the second window went down no problem also......this was cool..... now I'll try the drivers door.....hmmmmm.....nothing.....I fiddled with the switch.....I could hear the window motor hum slightly.......oh well.......nothing........so I went over to the workbench to grab some WD-40......next thing I know I'm 5 feet away from the car and the window goes down by itself !!!!......all the way down......HOLEY MOLEY I'm thinking, is this "Christine" ???? ...Is my car po ssessed ???.....I wasn't sure if I wanted to get back inside... in case the car decided to put all the windows up and lock me inside !!!......anyway, I tried the last window from OUTSIDE the car, (being careful to keep my arms out of the way of any windows that suddenly might want to go up of their OWN accord)........it was sticky also.....it went down but it didn't want to come up.....I fiddled with the switch again and got it to come up part way......then I heard some clicking sounds coming from the dashboard .....the clicks were about 5 seconds apart and it sounded like they were coming from two different places inside the car.......I figured it's probably time to clean the switches and check all the wiring, but as it was getting late I better pack it up for the night and go eat some dinner......I disconnected the battery and saw one of the biggest sparks I've ever seen come off a battery.....this confirmed my suspicion that either one of the motors was stuck "on" , or a switch was shorting, or a really bad grounding short somew here else in the car........NEXT project is to clean the switches and check as much of the wiring as I can.........I hope my car doesn't have a mind of it's own !!!!
I decided to name it "THE WANDERER"..... it has it's own song too....... I decided to call it The Wanderer after my first drive in it....... it also attracted a large crowd of wide-eyed men and women at the local gas station when I went to put gas in it.......More about that later............
My "fix-it" list:
1. wiring and switches
2. front end work
Michael Howlett
Boring Oregon
Where the grass is tall and all the cars are BIGG Behemoths.
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