pressedham said:
Rewired whole car (68 cuda) as per factory manual.
Dash is still original. New solinoid, new starter relay etc.
Went to hook up battery and POOFF.
There was a pop, like a light bulb exploding from somewere
under dash and there was a faint burning odour. Also the starter relay got really hot.
Everything is dead.
Were do i start to find problem.
You are lucky it did not catch on fire and burn your car to a crisp. When you do any major rewiring, always check for shorts with a multi-meter before hooking the battery up. It's also a good idea to put a fusible link in series the first time you hook up the battery and check all the circuits for proper operation.
To find your problem, pull every fuse out of the fuse panel. You will need a good multi-meter that measures ohms. With the battery removed from the car, put the meter across the POS and NEG battery cable and select the lowest ohms range on the meter. It should read infinate resistance. Now start inserting one fuse at a time into the fuse panel. At some point the meter should go to 0 ohms, or very close to it. That would be the circuit your short is in. You will then need to just trace your wiring to find it.
When you do this, make sure everything on the car is turned off. Like the HVAC blower, radio, wipers, lights, signals, etc. Also, you may want to remove any interior light bulbs that come on when the door is open. Otherwise you might start tracing a short only to find it is not really a short, but a light bulb or motor that you're measuring. Both will apprear as a low resistance.
It's also quite possible you have more than one short. Especially if you melted the insulation off any of the wires. So check every circuit very carefully. Good luck.
