The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay Lesson 101 in electrical.

If you are trying to bring back to life an old truck that has been sitting for years,,,,,GROUNDS/CONNECTIONS, uh, did I say grounds and connections?
Normally, if no one has butchered the wiring, there will be nothing wrong with the wires or gauges, ect.
It is grounds and connections that corrode or rust over a period of sitting around.
I have spent hours trying to get my fuel gauge to work on the 57. Finally found the problem: The spades on the back of the gauges were not making connection all the time, just at times, making it hard to pinpoint the problem. I removed the nuts and spade connecters, sanded the nuts and spades. Walla! All gauges work perfect now, with no fluctuations.

That is good work. We had a joke/truth when we were fixing airplanes, " connections, connections, connections" Every time some thing weird would happen it was some sort of bad connection always. Still the hardest thing to teach the new guys and the most frustrating thing to find. But when it works..:)

When I attended factory electrical training in Detroit with Cadillac back in the early 80's our instructors ALWAYS taught us to check your GROUNDS, CONNECTIONS and FUSES before you did any other diagnostics. If you didn't the punishment was intense!

The other mistake people make, along these same lines, they use 4 gauge grounding straps when a 6 volt system really needs 2 gauge. The 2 gauge ones are harder to find, but necessary.

Yep. I have restored a bunch of the old 2 cyl. John Deere tractors. They all came out with 6 volt. You gotta have BIG battery cables on them.