My wiring harness caught fire today

[68stang351]

I've had a bad day. After I left home going to work, my wiring harness somehow got situated upon the header which burnt through the insulation and then I guess grounded out the bare wires to the header because smoke was everywhere.

I yanked the batt. cables off and tore off my overflow tank (because the wire harness went underneath it), and then proceeded to beat it out with my Haynes manual, the only thing handy.

So all my wiring harnesses from the firewall forward are just bare burnt wires now, except for my ignition box wiring, thank God. My solenoid is also toasted, as soon as you touch the cables to the battery the car tries to start whether the key is in or not. This cause the car to knock me down and almost run me over.

All this caused me to be late for work, and then at work I had to deal with a bunch of idiots all day, while having work dumped on me that had to be done before I left, but I kept getting interrupted by customers (which is okay, except most of them were idiots, or they were rude.)

Rather than replace them with factory harnesses which I hear are poor design anyway, I think it's going to give me an excuse to put a Painless kit in that I've been thinking about anyway.

Any thoughts?

 

[shelbyseven]

sorry to hear that.i didn't go into work today specifically because i didn't want to deal with idiots.the same thing happened to me a few years back,luckily i had a fire extinqusher in the car so i only had to splice all my wires where they grounded out.

 

[68stang351]

luckily i had a fire extinqusher in the car .

My next purchase.
Actually, I thought about buying one a couple of weeks ago.

 

[kidtaurus]

Sorry to hear about your car. I am currently doing the Painless Wiring mod myself. I am almost done and since we both have 68s I can tell you what wire connects to what if you get lost. The only PITA in the whole thing is Turn Signal connections under the steering wheel and the headlight. Drop me a line if you need help.

 

[corpse]

I know that feeling of a fire - except mine started to billow smoke from under the dash of my stang.. Fortunately, I was able to prevent a flare up - which of course prompted me as well to buy an extinguisher.

But I've wondered - if you are having an electrical fire - sure, the fire extinguisher will put out hte FIRE, but u still need to kill the current to prevent it from starting back up right?? I've never used a fire extinguisher to put out a fire - only used one once to unload it someones car (hehehe, full of ppl too).

 

[68stang351]

But I've wondered - if you are having an electrical fire - sure, the fire extinguisher will put out hte FIRE, but u still need to kill the current to prevent it from starting back up right??

That's why the first thing I did was yank the cables off. Sadly, it's happened to me before, so I knew what to do.