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How many have discovered a "What the?" under their dash?

I decided to add new guages to Helen. I crawled under the dash and found this wad of wiring zip tied together under the dash. Hot wires going to nothing, household wire nut connections, nothing fused, and the best was the heater wiring. A stretch of wiring 5 feet long with 5 different connections, different colors and different guages all butt connected together. Took a month of Sundays but I feel much better now.

I just had this experience myself. Started the engine and noticed a light gray haze in the yard. I thought, "I hope I'm not burning oil." I wasn't. I was burning wires. I had smoke pouring out from under the dash, moving real fast like smoke does just before the fire breaks out. I shut the engine off and went looking for the fire extinguisher. Luckily, it cooled off. I found two splices under the dash that were just bare copper twisted together and left exposed.

My '56 dash had a rat's nest of wires when I bought it. Several systems had been re-wired and all with yellow wire. All with excess length and wadded all together. The strangest thing I found when I yanked it all out was an extra fuel gauged wired in with the dash gauge. My dash gauge worked albeit it showed opposite of the real reading.

I ripped every wire out of the entire truck and installed a new Hot Rod Wires harness.