<VV> John's Post on wiring

[Hank Kaczmarek]

All

In all deference to Smitty and Clark,  I suppose until your car burns up, the
attitude of "old is fine" is a sound one.

I know that Smitty mostly deals with EM's, and has much more experience with
their wiring than I. And I would not question his experience with them.

I am not the kind of guy who wants to tinker around patching bad spots in
harnesses. Many of the original Corvair owners, and those who are of the age
to have bought one new (whether they did or not), are more in posession of the
time to troubleshoot  and tinker about.

Additionally, they posess the time to be driving down the road, have the
lights go out or have a system short out, without worrying about when they
have to be where they are headed, or how much time there is to fix it.

This is mostly an opinion based decision. I know after I spend a pile of money
on paint, interior, etc....I don't want to see my car---and my investment
going up in smoke and flame because of something I could have replaced with
new and not had the problem.

Here's an example of how costly a penny wise and pound foolish decision can
be.

At Street Dreams Restorations in Morganton, NC. There sits a 1955 Chevrolet
coupe.  Fresh from a 80,000.00 "Hot Rod" style restoration, the owner decided
to take the car, still missing a few items here and there, up to Pigeon Forge
(a 3 hour drive up the road)  to a rod show, and see how his 8.000.00 paint
job, and 6000.00 383 stroker engine looked to the judges.

At the time the car left the shop, it did NOT have an air cleaner installed.
The owner wanted to buy one at the show and then have it judged, which he had
arranged to have delivered there.

The owner didn't like the way the air cleaner he had another rod guy bring to
the show looked on the car, so after the judging, he gave it back to the guy
and got his 100 odd dollars back in his pocket.

About 20 miles from being back at the shop, the engine backfired through the
carb, and without an air cleaner, the flame spread out, and an engine
compartment fire resulted.

The engine now sits on a stand, the distributor (what you can see of it) a
melted mass of plastic. The hood, firewall, and parts of both fenders had the
paint ruined from the heat.  Resulting heat also melted the dashboard and much
of the engine wiring harnesses, destroyed the IP gages, Stereo, but very
little of the almost 2K worth of Dynamat installed in the car.

While I was up there last Saturday retrofitting Camaro seats into the EUM,  I
watched one of the shop techs spend most of his day removing about 1/3 of the
8000.00 paint job from the entire front clip of the 55 with a DA sander.

All for not wanting to keep an air cleaner on the carb for the ride home. The
guy still has his 100.00!!!  Estimate of damage to the 55?  When they finish
fixing it, I'll let you know.  I wouldn't even want to guess!!!

Keep the 40+ year old harnesses.  I know some of the folks who espouse using
them have very nice cars.  May their health and safety remain intact while
driving their cars, and may their hearts never be broken as John's was.  If
indeed a broken heart ever results, the blame will be on them alone.

Hank