Date:         Thu, 27 Jun 1996 08:54:33 -0400
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "Anton J. Elmquist" <anton@spacelab.net>
Subject:      '71 Westy On Fire! (what went wrong?)

(shudder) Good morning!

First things first - I am okay, and the Westy is okay. No disasters here. 

What happened: Yesterday I was continuing with my slow job of replacing the 
wiring under the dash that the PO was so proud of - he did it all himself! 
Nevermind that all of the connections were simply twisted together - no wire 
nuts, no soldering - and no electrical tape. While manouvering the stereo 
out of the way to get at the homemade ignition switch wiring (typical VW 
button-on-the-dash-because-the-key-wasn't-working system) something grounded 
out and suddenly there was a cloud of black smoke. I sat there stunned, and 
then realized I had better put the fire out, or get the heck out of the van! 
Once I saw the flame, though, I wasn't worried. Only about 2 inches high - I 
blew it out...

The wierd thing is that although the ground to the stereo was completely 
fried, I couldn't find anything positive in the area that it could have 
grounded to - the ignition was off, and investigating with a test light 
turned up nothing in the vicinity - and there were no other wires burned... 
I finished what I set out to do, and it's running fine, but I'm still 
spooked. What could it have been? I guess it'll be okay now that I've 
replaced all of the twisted connections with nice soldered wire, but...

I'm headed upstate today - if you see a ball of smoke headed up the Thruway, 
that's me!

- Anton
-- 
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* "Wretches, utter wretches! Keep your hands away from beans!" *
*                                                              *
*                                           - Empedocles       *
* J. Anton Elmquist                                            *
* anton@spacelab.net                                           *
* http://www.spacelab.net/~anton                               * 
* http://www.spacelab.net/~anton/oyabando                      *
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