Re: IML: my 1961 Imperial wirering burned up

Hi To All: Here's My Experience With the Electric System Problems. 1st Thing I Did Was to Change Over To the Later Style Alternator With the Electronic Regulator. I Did This Because I Went With the Later Style Electronic Ignition. One Problem Was That ALL Bulk Head Connector Connections Were Corroded Badly, I Have No Idea How It Ran As Well As It Did. Another Problem Showed Up When the Wire Going to the Amp Gage Fried Completely. The Alternator Diodes Went Bad or the Resistance in the Corroded Bulk Head Connectors Too High OR As I Really Think It Was All off the Above Together. The Larger Out Put of the New Alternator Just Made the Burnt Wire Problem a Little Worse. The Fixes. I Replaced the Wire To And From the Amp Gage in the Dashboard With Wires 1 Size Bigger. A Nice # 10 Wire. When It Fried It Melted the Insulation in to a Gooey Mess That Stuck Together On Other Wires Insulation in the Wire Bundles. If I Had Been a Little Worse I'd Still Be Replacing Wires. It Was A Real Fun Job of Almost Standing on Your Head Across's the Front Seat to Do the Work. Next Cleaning All the Bulkhead Connector Connections. Pulling Them Apart One at a Time, Using Both Electro Clean Spray and Fine Sand Paper to Clean Them. I Assembled Them With Electrical Grease. When I Assembled the Amp Meter Wiring I Skipped the Bulkhead Connectors Because The Plastic in the Housing Where They Went Through Was Melted And Went Straight Thru. It Ran Just Fine Last Summer for About 400 Miles With No Problems. My Advice is To Pull Off Some of the Wires Into & Out of the Bulkhead Connector And See If You Have Any Potential Big Problems.

Now a Electrical Question. Where to Put Some Fuseable Link Wires in to the System? If I Have Another "Problem" the Fuseable Is Much, Much Easier To Replace. The Later Electrical Systems Have the Good Old Fuseable Links. The 62 Does Not! I Think the Factory Learned Of Problems With Alternators Systems And Put Them a Few Years Later.