Electrical Fire!

[jacks66mustang]

Great day, been working on my stang for 18 months. Finally got to the point of installing the battery, turned the key and white smoke started rolling out from under the dash. Lots of it, thought I was going to have to push it out of the garage so my house would not burn. Turns out the bonehead who painted the car had wired the ignition switch wrong. Big yellow wire running to ignition switch fried completely back to junction box, and took all the other 40+ year old wiring with it. I ordered a painless wiring kit for it today, $629 from Summit. Figured it was worth the price for modern wiring and better fuse protection. Anyone installed on of these painless kit in their stang?

 

[66 Fastback]

My ignition burned my harness up right after Christmas. I finally orderd the dash harness, headlight harness and alternator harness. I started pulling the old wires last weekend. The junction plug at the firewall was fused together. I had to cut the wires since I could not get the plugs apart. It's a pain putting in the new harness, but maybe I'll finish up this weekend. I will be installing some fusible links etc that the original harness did not have. The problem with the original harness is it has a large wire running to the starter relay. And then a smaller wire tees off of the larger wire to feed other circuits without a fuse in it. It is a poor design, but with some fusible links, maybe I can minimize the damage.
While I am at it, I plan on addressing other old vehicles I own too that do not have any fusing or protection of the wires running from the battery to the ammeter or fuse block.
Doug

 

[XFlow_Fairlane]

I would skip fuseable links.....they tend to cause problems themselves at times. I would look into an inline fuse holder small inline glass style for smaller loads and an ATC for medium circuits. anything over 30 amps should really be on its own anyways (ALT feeds and such) for those I would use high current circuit breakers.

fuse links have a tendancy to burn and leave you stranded where a fuse can be replaced or a breaker reset.

 

[66 Fastback]

I'm considering the in-line fuses too. I was trying to find some terminal strips or junction blocks that would allow me to retain the stock terminals on the wiring harness. (I hate cutting into un-molested wiring harnesses). The spade type inline fuses are a better design in my opinion. The glass fuse holders can move around more and most are not water tite. My old 58 Harley does not have any stock fusing on it. I'll have a few to add to it.
Doug

 

[xzerokidx]

Should have looked here, I installed the same harness in my fathers '55 chevy

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/EZ2W...206QQitemZ190087705816QQrdZ1QQsspagenameZWDVW