The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay luckaly my 51 didnt burn to the ground

I have driven my truck daily for over a yesr with few problems.I went to jumpin and go to work and noticed a odor of a fire.I was close to the burn barell and didnt give it another thought till i stomped the starter and nothing.Ichecked the cabels and the battery was warm so i disconected the cable and got a ride to work from my son.It wasnt the burn barrel i smelt.The amp guge was charred and the glass fase is blackened.The heat melted the corners of the new guage faces on the aposeing guages.The coil wires insulation along with the insulation on the hot wire from the amp guage to the starter is gone.The paint on the fire wall where the wires were is blisterd and chared and the rubber cab bushing that the wires pass through is melted.Ive owned this truck close to 30 years and this is a first.Im glad i still have it.

Know the feeling. I'm getting ready to tear down the old chicken house I stored my 38 in. When I put the starter back on apparently either I chaffed the wires to a ground or didn't tighten them properly went to start it and they caught fire. Fourtunately only the insuolation on the wires and cable burned before I got it out. I was thinkin it would be a fine how do you do I just got all my Demolition and construction permits and now I'm going too burn down to works with my valuebles inside. Lesson: 1. Check wiring for chaffing and tightness after each job. 2 Put fire extinghisher in plain sight. 3. Chicken manure will smother fire in emergency.

I'm sure it will, but the smell will kill you!

Slowrider, that's the worst I've heard about that didn't go up in smoke. Count yourself lucky you still have a truck. I'm assuming you were running the original cloth covered wiring. Time for a new harness, and replace all the grommets, too. If I were doing the work, I would opt for a harness with a fuse block, these trucks were really lacking in that department.

Fred T is right on target. Sounds like time for new wires, and not just the ones that burned off insulation.

Someplace in the primary positive circuit between the battery and the last place to burn you had a direct bare wire contact to ground. The battery pushed all the amps it could.

It would be a good idea to try to find where the bare contact occurred and trace back to the battery from that point. Things other than the amp gauge may have lost all their smoke or been damaged by the high amperage and be laying in wait to fail at a later time.

You are very lucky and I am glad you didn't have to write about the fire truck coming to visit.

Does this make sense?Ithink it may have started abought 10 inches from the switch where the vent mechanism rubed on the switch to coil wire.The reason being is thats where the insulation started to get fried.If these wires bare,d there , would that cause it to burn these 2 wires?

the handle to the outside vent was the culprit on my near fatal melt down. i had added an interior light under the dash and did not notice that the wire ran across the vent arm. i did it during the winter time and basically forgot all about it - come summer i was running down the road and opened the vent to let a little air in and all of a sudden i had smoke boiling everywhere. the wire was caught in the hinge. burned my hands a little getting the wire broke but didn't do too much damage to the truck thank goodness.