Wednesday 12 October 2016

Wonky Wolseley Electrics

Though the Wolseley performed well on our run to the North, there were some annoying electric problems, culminating in acrid smoke emanating from the steering column, wipers not wiping, indicators working of their own accord and the panel lights cutting out. This was very unlike our trusty Wolseley, so I went in to investigate. The indicator stalk and circuit seemed allright except for some strange fluff and after dismantling and thorough cleaning it worked fine again.
I thought the probable cause of these random blackouts might be the fuses or fuse box connections. In this photo you can see an additional modern fuseblock I installed earlier to split the lighting circuits to tail and front pilot lights. No problems there, so I set out to move all the other fuse circuits from the old block to the new fuse block.

And that was a good idea as the connectors in the old fusebox were all wobbly and dirty. I could have replaced the fusebox with a new one, but I wanted to split some of the fused groups and add more fuses.
Easier said than done. The plan was to use the unused fuses in the modern fuse box and use the terminals at the back of the old box as wire junctions to splice the new wires into the factory wiring.
After a few hours of wrestling wires and connectors the new fuse box is fully functional.  The old one is now empty. Job done.