I have a weak short somewhere and have spent days trying to find it.Can I drive the car and disconnect the battery cable while it is parked until I find the short?
Gary Kistner
Gary Kistner
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Re: 56 vette electrical
No such thing as a "weak short". If you have a constant drain, and you are not blowing fuses or frying wires, likely it is involving some device in the car. Have you tried using an ammeter or voltmeter to check current flow while pulling fuses one at a time to isolate the problem? Keep in mind that some of the devices in the car are powered all the time without a fuse and must be checked also, coming to mind are the starter/solenoid, Cigar lighter, Voltage regulator, Generator, and horn relay.Bill Clupper #618 -
Re: 56 vette electrical
Clup gives you good advice. On your question about driving and disconnecting the battery, the answer is YES. If you have a battery cutoff switch, it makes things even easier. Once the battery is open circuit to the car (either POS or NEG bat terminal disconnected), you've essentially removed the battery altogether.
On troubleshooting to find the source of your battery drain, you can do it yourself as Clup suggests by using an ammeter, pulling all the fuses (expect some drain even with the fuses all out as the clock will keep on ticking but it should present mA level bursts of current drain as it re-cocks the winding spring every 90 seconds or so) then re-inserting fuses one at a time to find the branch circuit 'guilty' of excess drain.
If you don't feel comfortable doing electrical troubleshooting, a local auto electric shop ought to be able to do the fault isolation for you in 30-minutes to one hour flat. Finding and fixing the problem source(s), will probably take longer....Comment
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Re: 56 vette electrical
If your car has a wonderbar radio the dial light is wired to stay on with the key off. You have to turn off the radio for the dial light to go out. RobComment
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Re: 56 vette electrical
Part of the fun of a '56-'57 is that the standard car didn't have any fuses (except the "secret" one buried in the headlight switch for the dash lights); the only fused items are the options (radio, heater, courtesy lights, park brake warning light). Anything else that shorts to ground will fry the harness.Comment
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Re: 56 vette electrical
I drove my '61 for years in college and after with a slow drain of some sort. I disconnected the battery when I parked. Combined with the missing hood latch knob, it made a for some poor boy theft protection. The car had been converted to an alternator. I went through several alternators, regulators and batteries on warranty repairs. I even took it to a local battery & electric shop to go through the wiring to make sure the alternator conversion had been done properly. They did not find any problems. Sears usually ran a few system tests when they replaced the battery, and it always passed. They finally refused to warrant any further work. By then I had a real job and forked over the money for a new wiring harness. I installed the harness and went back to a generator and have not had a slow short problem since then.Comment
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