The 'E' Type Forum

Wot a day !!!!
set off for a bit of lunch, nice day,
managed about 1/2 mile, Then clouds of smoke from behind the dash
PANIC,
I droppped the centre section (thankfully mine does come down)
to be greeted with lots of sparks and smoke.
dissconnected the battery manged to get home.
(back to the daily driver the wife wasn't missing lunch out!)
The problem was the earth lead to the cigar lighter, which terminates on a spade. located on the bulkhead behind where the speedo/tacho are, it had dropped off onto the steering column support ,causing a poor earth, which in turn damaged the insulation causing a short circuit in the dash loom,
which I am now having to replace, and thankfully not the whole car!!

Paul : that was not the earth lead, but the live feed, which then shorted out on the column and caused a fire . It should have been fused, probably to fuse 8, but it sounds in your case as though the fuse must have been bypassed

No sorry
but definately the earth at fault, the lighter is fused at number 8.
the problem was the earth got warm because of the bad connection and softned the insulation inside the loom which in turn caused the short circuit
hope this clarifys what i mean
regards Paul

Paul

Sorry to read of your woes. I once had a Fiat with short behind the dashboard and the arid smoke from the insulation as the loom melted was terrifying. Fortunately the car did NOT catch fire but the loom was ruined.

I'm a little surprised it was the earth lead that caused the problem though .. was there something in the cigar lighter drawing current because without that I can't see how there would be any current in the earth lead.... or even if there was current it would be limited by the poor earth connection.

Good luck with the new loom.

Graham

Well , I do not wish to sound argumentative, but I agree with Graham and the matter is too serious not to be raised again . If the heat occurred inside the loom then there has to have been excess current flowing. In any event, in both my Es the cigar lighter has no earth lead, but is earthed through the metal connections of the console in my S2, and the earthed baseplate of the let down panel in my S1 . There has to be a problem in a circuit somewhere causing a short circuit, probably through one of the unfused white wires, ( which carry current only when the ignition is on ) although a brown wire cannot be entirely disregarded, but the fire would have been more likely to occur at a random time then, rather than just after the start of the journey