Morris Minor Owners Club

Hello everyone.
Newbie and what a post to kick off with. Not had the best start today to Minor ownership. We have just collected our Minor and at the end of our 40 mile journey home we noticed smoke coming from under the bonnet. Bonnet released and we had a electrical fire at the HT lead cyl 2/HT Coil and voltage regulator box. Luckily no one hurt and I got the battery leads off before the battery cooked. Taking stock of our options (insurance claim versus sourcing a new wiring loom/testing of electrical items and fitting). My question is does anyone in Sheffield area know of a good electrical place that could fit a loom?

Any help would be much appreciated.

John[frame][/frame]

Oh dear!!!!!

Welcome John to our site, This is a place of pure inspiration, passion, love and enthusiasm for the good old Minor, I visit the site every day just to see what's going on with people and as I know nothing about my car it helps me understand stuff that would take hours of research in just a few moments with a picture and a chat.

The site helps me feel as though I'm part of the Minor family and as I am the only person in the Sunderland Club it helps me feel connected to a whole network of Minor lovers, I hope you discover the same.

Im sorry I can't help but feel for you my friend as your situation doesn't look good, it might be a simple fix but I wouldn't know where to start...

hope you get it sorted,

Kind regards

Alan

Don't despair!A new loom is less than £150 and is a common sense fit unless you're not that way inclined.If so there could well be an enthusiast in your area on this forum who may be willing to help you.May be worth asking.If you search the forum there are plenty of references on how it's done.First thing will be to establish whether the fire started with old/faulty/dangerous wiring or a component that failed.
Mick

Ohhh, that looks nasty and is a bad way to start minor ownership, but not the end of the world.

As an electrical / electronics engineer I will second that there was a cause to that, the fried wiring loom is the effect, all electrical / electronic failures usually have a cause and a dramatic chain effect.

I have seen so many badly done bodges to car wiring. My Minor had twisted together wiring, loom clipped under the metal tabs with no protection round it, sitting on top of the clutch linkage and just general shoddy workmanship.

The things with car wiring are fuses, good connections, the right size cable and good workmanship, all go a long way to a decent safe reliable job.

The Minor wiring loom is dead simple and easy to get at, its not the maze of multiplexed wiring like modern cars, I reckon in a couple of hours you could have the car rewired, just need to make sure you get the correct loom, for a dynamo I presume as you have the control box.

Shame your not down is Essex as I would glady give you hand with it. Good luck getting it sorted out.

You need to find the root cause of that short - most likely a wire passing through a bulkhead and not protected by a grommet. Did it happen when you switched something on ?

I should have added using grommets to my list, there was plenty of them missing on mine, all of the wiring for the lights was minus them where wires pass through wings/inner wings. Dreadful mess !!

Thanks for your replies everyone, John is out of the country for a few days so thought I would reply to let you all know we do appreciate the responses. biomed32uk, thankyou I also wish we were near you as help would be greatly appreciated.

We purchased the car through the sale section on here hoping we would have less problems than one off ebay and paid above our budget but just goes to show with something this old you never know what's going to happen.

As it stands I have a local Morris specialist coming to have a look and give me a quote today, hopefully we may get some answers as to what happened and if we can afford it get it put right professionally, I don't think John fancies tackling this as his first job!

Thanks again guys, will let you know the outcome.

Marie

Oh dear - 'local Morris specialist' sounds a bit worrying.... Hopefully only the front loom that is damaged? Fire at HT lead #2 cylinder and coil, sounds a bit odd. The main power lead from the dynamo is in that area - and connects back to the Reg box -and is of course unfused.. Perhaps that cable had rubbed/shorted on some way. Maybe worth considering a new loom with alternator - and getting rid of the Dynamo and Reg box -they may well be damaged anyway. It's odd though that the wires at the fuse box are also burned - and the A and A1 cables at the Reg box. There appears to be an 'extra' heavy cable running away from the lower fuse of fuse box - where does that go - can we see a 'bigger picture ? It's from the 'un-fused' side of the fuse box -what does this wire do - was it there when you collected the car? Could this be the start of the problem I wonder - dead shorted to earth and pulling massive current through the other cables from the battery - and from the dynamo....?

Haha, I found a local garage who advertises that he does a lot of work on Morris minors and grew up with them, therefore I would class him as a bit of a specialist compared to us being newbies. The wiring is exactly as we picked it up and the seller told us it had recently had a new loom which we are assuming he fitted himself, will try and get a bigger photo up if I can as if anyone can shed any light on why it happened we can make sure its sorted so it doesn't happen again.

Marie

Photo before damage taken from sellers listing photos.[frame][/frame]

Hmm - that 'extra wire' seems to be coming from the battery side of the starter pull switch directly to the fuse box... It should really go to the A terminal, and then back to the fuse. Can't see it making any difference, except it seems to be 'outside' the loom and therefore vulnerable to damage. That may not be the root cause then... Is the burning confined to the engine bay - or have any of the wires behind the speedo ,or at the ignition or lighting switch, burned out? I expect your small garage/brought up on Minors will be fine..

Thanks for all your input bmcecosse, I'm afraid I cant talk cars because I don't know anything them but when hubby's back from Ireland on Thursday he will post a more detailed explanation.

The guy from the garage gave us what we thought was a very reasonable quote of £230 plus loom, yes its a lot more than fitting it yourself but unfortunately John doesn't have the time over the next few weeks due to work commitments, and the list of other damaged parts were as we thought so all in all a fair price with all the other extra leads and stuff. he did seem to know his stuff too so hopefully will do a good job and he pointed out all the other parts which aren't original to the year but we knew about those and aren't too bothered. Also sounds like he has a good supply of spares too which is good to know.

Marie

If there is no damage elsewhere - just where we can see it in that photo, if I was paying for it myself, I would be repairing it rather than fitting a complete new loom. And as earlier - I would have an alternator fitted - which will lose the Reg box and quite a bit of that damaged wiring anyway. Perhaps you should try for an Auto Electrician locally ? Your quote with loom is going to be £500+ when you add Vat. Presumably you are claiming it on Insurance - under the 'Fire' section ?

He did say it would come in under 400 for it all, but I think after discussing with John last night we will go for the alternator option instead.

FWIW, to prevent an incident such as this I put a 30 amp inline fuse in the main feed, between the battery side of the starter switch and the A terminal of the regulator box. The old wiring loom on our 1961 2 door M1000 isn't too healthy.
YMMV

Yes - a 'master fuse' is an idea BUT - if it blows while engine running the dynamo/alternator volts will go very high and probably blow any bulbs that are on - and probably ruin an alternator, although a dynamo would survive . Still -may be a better alternative to a fire...... But I think I would go higher than 30 - maybe 50 ?

Good point... the fuse should just cater for what would be a catastrophic short circuit such as between loom and body.

Such a short is likely to stay a short, and then the alternator/generator voltage would remain below 12V... even with the engine running.

Yes - that's a good point too!

Your quote to have a new loom fitted seems reasonable to me. Looks like 5 hours at £46/hr. Also good you have found someone local who knows his way around old cars. Autosparks sell new looms for £150ish depending on model/year.

To me it almost sounds like a fault in the dynamo. Are either of the 2 wires conected to it crispy? Hard to tell but it looks like a descent job has been done of fitting the new loom by the previous owner so I wouldn't blame his work. Given the damage, I would go with a new loom, localised repairs always look like a bodge and can give more problems in the future if not done well.

Thanks for all the replies - a big help. I have had a dig under the bonnet and the regulator is fried, Dynamo look fried (not tested to see if it motors but it does have loose wire inside and big terminal is crispy), now need to test starter motor. Wiring loom is well and truly gone and looks it has failed in multiple places - probably as insulation has broken down.

As dynamo looks cooked thinking alternator is way to go so hopefully we have a game plan.