[69_cougar_uk]

Before I bore you with the tale, get out there now and check all the routing of your looms and vacuum hoses before it's too late. Especially if you recently bought the car or if it has had a wiring or engine swap. I learnt the hard way.....

Took my 69 standard out for a cruise last weekend. It ran great, but then when I was putting her away the electrics under the hood and behind the dash caught fire! Scary stuff! I shut her off and the fire stopped pretty much immediately.

Having completed my gauge cluster swap only 3 weeks ago, I assumed it was my own fault. I had put an XR7 gauge cluster and dash in a standard car. The under dash loom had been swapped for XR7 too. I modified the wiring under the hood to save time and money and was 100% confident I had got it right.

The good news is that it wasn't my wiring that was bad. Also the fire could have been a lot worse I'll have her on the road next week. Imagine if I had been doing 70 at the time. I wouldn't have been able to shut her down so quickly.

The reason for the fire? The loom under the hood that passes round the inner fender on the drivers side had been routed right next to the exhaust manifold. It got melted through and fused two wires together. Watch out for this as it is even possible to disturb the loom when replacing the plug leads.

The only thing I want to see smoke coming from on my cat is the tires!

 

[dan]

That happened to me but not as bad.I put a new nutral switch on mine but it was to close to the headers.I got it in time .I mad e the wires longer and kept them away.No problems now

 

[texrep]

WOW ... It's funny you bring that up... I was out looking at redcat just yesterday and I found a wire loom down resting on the exhaust where it connects to the manifold I had retaped it last summer for the sake of looks ... anyway the wires were pretty crispy. I havn't been driving redcat to much lately .. luckey for me.. I will go out after work today and remedy the situation....


Don


Don

 

[72cat]

When going over the 72 awhile back I noticed that quite few wires were just lying on the intake manifold, while I guess this does not get hot enough to cremate the wires it sure makes them all hard, so I rerouted them around the on the frame support things, got some heat shield tubing to put on first just in case they happened to get loose, sure enough, after she went in for a minor job the wires were lying on the manifold again, so now they are 'tied' onto the frames.

 

[69_cougar_uk]

Crispy wires and insulation tape. Not good. Mine were seriously crispy. I too have a problem with wires draped accross the intake manifold. Doesn't look good either. Not exactly what you would call a detailed engine bay.

 

[Ray]

wires are supposed to go across engine or down the valve cover

 

[Ray]

and there are several clips the hoses and wires run thru along the fender aprons to keep parts off exhaust

 

[72cat]

Unfortunately when the cars are about 30 years old the clips in the looms no longer clip in, an answer to this would proberly be to get new clips and tape them on to loom. Now, where to buy new clips, in my country??