Fusible Link

[JAllenWAG]

Ok I was driving to the mountains...had been on the road about 4 hours and the cd player started going off for about 3 seconds at a time. When it did this I noticed my voltmeter shot down to zero. After doing this a few times the cd player just went dead. It started getting dark and I realized I had no lights working at all. Luckily I pulled into my buddy's place right before it got dark. Checked the fuses and they were good...popped the hood and I had a blown fusible link. I tried to splice what was left together and it sparked and burned right up when I reconnected the battery. I know these are blown by an overload in the system but what can cause it to overload? Voltage regulator? Short? Could the alternator be going since my voltage went down to zero? The car still runs and drives fine..just no lights or radio. I have the burned section of wiring from another wag but don't want to burn that one up the second I splice it in.

[Budde]

Check around the exhaust manifold. I had a wire that rubbed up against the exhaust mainifold & eventually burned through which caused a short circuit.

[PhilSine]

You have a short somewhere. I guess we can eliminate the ammeter in your case. Get a multimeter and do a continuity test on the positive battery cable with reference to ground. That'll confirm a short to ground. the fun part is finding it.

[JAllenWAG]

Yeah Budde I have burned wires in that area before. I'll have to check it all out this weekend.

Philsine: Do I do that by putting one lead of the multimeter on the battery and the other on the frame? Then what reading tells me if I have continuity or not? I haven't troubleshot any electrical problems in a while...and I'm not that good at dealing with them either.

[Desert Beast]

one way to see if its a short is to disconnect the neg cable and use a test light between the neg post and the cable, if it lights up you have a short. now to narrow down the possible area of the short start pulling fuses one by one (replacing them after checking) and when the light goes out that’s the circuit where the short should be. that’ll narrow down the search a bit.
my .02