1981 chev pickup - no electrical power

Apr 21, 2006 2 Replies

Driving down the road, my '81 chev truck lost all electrical power. No radio, dash lights ... nothing. The battery is recent and has been tested with a voltage meter and is good. We also tested at the starter, and the power is getting to the starter. After the starter the wires seem to go to a rather useless(to me anyway) device that has two connections, on the firewall beside the brake booster. It looks like a ground. No power registers on the volt meter( I don't know if it's supposed to, but it seemed logical to trace the power from the baterry and on from there.)



I don't understand why ALL electrical power throughout the vehicle would fail. At first thought, it must be a ground, but all other grounds seem fine. Could it be something as simple as a fuse, or since the age of the truck, the whole fuse box itself.



If anyone knows of a diagram somewhere on the internet of the '81 engine bay, I could start with that.



Any advice is appreciated.



TIA.


Down by the starter on one of those wires has a fuseable link in it, my guess is it went bad, this is a little block within the wire, when you find the block take each end in your hands and try to pull it apart, if it pulls apart than it is bad, I usually just by pass these but you should really goto the parts store and pick another one or two of them up.

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