Getting the CJ2A together after buying it in parts 20 years ago and storing it away. As part of getting it going, I replaced the coil (with internal resistor), points, condenser, and plug wires with new. Hot wiring the engine directly to the battery, the thing fired up like a champ, on a single turn of the starter, hot or cold. The engine and the old carburetor seem to play very well together.
OK, time to wire up the thing for real. The old wiring loom was chopped up and a real mess, so I moved the wiring loom and regulator over from my CJ3B, "running when parked" some years back, with a nice Brazilian manufactured wiring loom from the nineties, clean and tidy.
What may have been my downfall was leaving out the Ford old style starter relay from the 3B, as various diagrams showed things being wired to the 3 wire Delco alternator with the regulator but not the starter relay.
I recycled the Delco 3 wire alternator that came with the 2A, as the identical 3B alternator and bracket didn't fit right, so the alternator is an unknown quantity.
So after wiring things up for real and hooking up the battery, then trying to light off the engine, I got an engine fire. The ammeter pegged at over 60 amps on the plus side when I turned the ignition key on, and the wire that burned was the one connected to the #4 blade of the regulator, the positive side of the coil, and the ignition switch. The wire was destroyed at the regulator end of things, melted the insulation up to the coil and through the firewall, and got a bit toasty from there to the ignition switch.
I may be leaving out something important, but I don't want to go on with page upon page of maybe irrelevant detail. I want to find out two things, if possible. One is what was the screw-up? I was careful to multimeter all leads so that nothing got crossed up or improperly shorted out. Two is what do I need to replace now? I figure the engine room end of the wiring loom is a goner, along with the regulator and the coil. Anything else I should check? Is my vintage ammeter gauge likely fried?
Any ideas or help would be very valuable to me. 45 years of working on this stuff, and I have never burnt things up before. Very frustrating and humbling.
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