Yesterday, I went to the auto shop that has been fixing my shift linkage at the bottom of the steering column to pick up Rose. The linkage was fixed, and a problem with the parking pawl also was fixed. Apparently, there were two things causing the problem of the transmission locking up in reverse...
I found my Rose behind the shop being worked on. Her instrument panel was out, and a mass of wires was hanging down. There was sticky melted tar/electrical tape all over the wiring. The mechanic said that after road testing it and every thing running well, he was headed back to the shop when smoke started coming out of car. He stopped quickly, and pulled some wires off to stop the smoking/fire. I do not remember what he said he pulled, but he got the smoking to stop. He was able to restart the car and get it back to the shop.
He said that on further investigation, it appears that he must have pushed one of the contacts on the ballast resistor into the fire wall, touching it, without him realizing it when he re-installed the steering column.. He said he could see where it arced. That started wiring smoking and burning... The ballast resistor survived. He is going to install it with an insulated material behind it between it and the firewall so that cannot happen again. In the meantime, he said that only one or two wires appear to be burnt, and he can fix that, and clean up the mess you will see. He said that whoever rewired this car did not know what they were doing. That would be some previous owner. He said he was glad it happened to him because he would have hated it happening to me. He said when he is done, it will be right and repaired properly and everything will be working again as it should. Here are some pix.
I found my Rose behind the shop being worked on. Her instrument panel was out, and a mass of wires was hanging down. There was sticky melted tar/electrical tape all over the wiring. The mechanic said that after road testing it and every thing running well, he was headed back to the shop when smoke started coming out of car. He stopped quickly, and pulled some wires off to stop the smoking/fire. I do not remember what he said he pulled, but he got the smoking to stop. He was able to restart the car and get it back to the shop.
He said that on further investigation, it appears that he must have pushed one of the contacts on the ballast resistor into the fire wall, touching it, without him realizing it when he re-installed the steering column.. He said he could see where it arced. That started wiring smoking and burning... The ballast resistor survived. He is going to install it with an insulated material behind it between it and the firewall so that cannot happen again. In the meantime, he said that only one or two wires appear to be burnt, and he can fix that, and clean up the mess you will see. He said that whoever rewired this car did not know what they were doing. That would be some previous owner. He said he was glad it happened to him because he would have hated it happening to me. He said when he is done, it will be right and repaired properly and everything will be working again as it should. Here are some pix.
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