79 Spider frying wire

[barnesjtsl]

My spder was running great, but I had a bad oil leak. I pulled the engine changed the gaskets and seals put the engine back in and started it last night and ran it for a few minutes then shut it down.

Tonight I come home, try and start the car and the ground wire coming from the coil bracket starts to burn. It is the wire that runs from the coil bracket to the back of the plate on the passanger side valve cover plate with the 3 screws.

This is driving me nuts because it ran perfectly before I pulled the engine and replaced the gaskets. The oil leak was that bad.

Any ideas?

[So Cal Mark]

reattach the ground cable under the car on the left side of the bell housing before you fry all of the small ground wires and the throttle cable

[barnesjtsl]

Thanks Mark. I will do that.

I'm hoping you could elaborate a little on this if you could? The way I have it setup now is the same way I had it setup before I pulled the engine. I drove it like this before pulling the engine ever since I bought it about 15,000 miles ago and had no problems.

I will do as you suggest. Your knowledge on these things is much greater than mine, I'm just not sure why this would be a problem now and not before?

Any thoughts?

[RoyBatty]

I think he is suggesting that it is possible you may have forgotten to reconnect the main bonding ground cable that goes from the car body to the bell housing on the left side under the drivers floor board.
If it's not there then you should install one, ASAP.
I forgot the same when I changed transmissions. I lucked out though and didn't cook any wires. Just had a slow cranking starter.

[barnesjtsl]

Stupid me, you are correct.

I'm certain I didn't reintall that wire. I will take care of that this evening.

Thanks guys,

jb

[barnesjtsl]

Well I cleaned and reattached the wire and it worked perfectly.

Now though my tack and temp gauge no longer work. Could this have caused the killing of these gauges?

Thanks,

jb

[So Cal Mark]

only if you damaged the ground circuit from cluster when wires melted

[spider2081]

I think the tach wire (Brown/white) connects to the coil and could be wrapped in the wire bundle with the ground wire that melted, so it could be damaged. Or you might have knocked it off the terminal repairing the burnt ground. The temp gauge connects to the sender closest to the firewall in the head. Its ground is under the instrument panel. I don't think leaving the main engine ground off would damage these circuits with a single issue. If I remember correctly you can have someone watch the temp gauge and touch the wire from the sender to ground and the needle should move toward full hot. Touch it quickly don't leave it there. Maybe someone can confirm this.

[So Cal Mark]

you can check the temp gauge by grounding the wire to the sending unit