What a weekend!

After flogging my car for a week and seemingly evrything going wrong, I gog it running this morning and drove it 15 miles to an open local car show. The lovcal Street Rodders put this show on every Spirng. Now a little background to my week:

Posted here about my car, I had just rebuilt, not starting. It ia a chopped

66 bug on a 67 pan. I charged the battery and nothing ,turn the key and silence! So after many suggestions here one worked, The main wire from the light switch to the key was disconnected. Fixed that.

I still needed to adjust the brakes. When I had the pan rebuilt I had them convert the 4 brake drums to 4 lug. That is great if the mechanic is thinking when he doies it. It also never occured to me....that the 4 lug drum has brake adjustment holes in the backing plate and wide 5 drums hav the hole in the drum. So,you guessed it he put on 4 lug drums on the back and 5 lug backing plate . No way to adjust the brakes! Not too big a problem, I drilled some holes and used my airdrive rotary file to open them up. Done, adjusted the brakes. Decided to take the car for a quick spin down the street and back to check everything out. I get about a block from the house and the gas pedle is on the floor but the engine won't rev and dies. as I hit the brakes. It won't restart, so onh our first hot and 90% humidity day, I have to push the car back home two blocks. At least the street was flat. Now on the verge of a heart attack, I call it quits and pack it in.

Sunday morning, today,I get out in the shop to try to get the car going so I might make it to the car show.

Connect the battery, cranks but won't start. Change to new plugs, no one is home to watch for me th see if I am getting a spark, Cranks, won't start!

So I am sitting there going over all the possibilities it could be when I remember that when the car died yesterday, I caught a whiff of something electricle getting fried!

So I get a flkashlight and check the fuses, sure enough there it is a fried fuse , the first one near the steering column. I replace the fuse and voila! she fires right up. So I sit there enjoying my genious, I decide again to take a quick run down the street and back, as I pull out of the garage I put on the brakes and I hear a pop and the engine dies. Blown fuse again. At least I am still mostly in the garage.

So I open the hood to trace down the problem. I getout my wiring diagram and trace down all the 6 wires to and from this fuse. There were two black with yellow stock coded wires, They looked to be going to the head lights on the left, since I had replaced the trhee prong plug on this light I figured that must be it.

I also pulled off the drivers fron wheel to folloe the wires in a nd around this area. My car has a two switch brake master cylinder, and I remember that when I was putting everything back there was an extra set of two wires I assumed they went to thebrake s, Nope they were for the horn! so everytime I hit the brake I was hitting the horn and shorting the fuse. Now all works as it should,well almost!

I headed down the roadto the show. I noticed that the farther I drove the harder iot was to drive slow. The brakes were dragging and getting hot.

To make this already long winded story short, I got there and on the way home, I had to stop a few times to let the brakes cool . Whle sitting on the side of the road, the only people that stopped to help were other VW guys!

I even won an award for the best ipmport!

Mike

Reply to
Mike West
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Replace your rubber brake lines, and study your wiring diagram a little more. The ignition should NOT be fused...

Reply to
Gary Tateosian

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