Ok im going to try to make this short and give a cliff notes version. A couple weeks ago my '72 skylark was completely dead. I opened the hood and the battery read 12.4V. I closed the hood and it started up just like normal. This has happened twice since and now the car is completely dead, no headlights, no radio, no dash lights, not starting, nothing. I checked the battery cables and cleaned up the battery posts and it still reads 12.4V. Everything Ive read on the forums points towards fusible links. The only wires I have coming off of the starter is a black and two white or yellow, hard to tell. Can somebody please point me in the right direction!?
The fusible links should be a black and a brown wire that goes to the big post with the battery cable. The yellow wire goes to the "R" Terminal and a purple wire goes to the "S" terminal. It appears that someone did some "work" on your wiring and changed the fusible links with different color wires. The fusible links should be a little thicker than the yellow and purple wires.
Oh someone has definitely done some work on the wires, it’s a nightmare. I have no purple wire either! Those three wires I’m holding is all that goes to the starter except for the battery wire
I have one thicker black, one yellow, and the battery cable on the big post of the starter, and the other yellow on the small post closest to the block of the starter and that is it.
See the larger section in the middle of the wire? Thats the fuse-able part. You'll need to test for continuity across that to see if its good. If I remember right there should be 2 of them.
The fusible link is the section of wire between the eyelet and the large section. Usually about 10 inches. The large piece is where the fusible link and the normal wire are connected.
You have a bad connection somewhere, my bet is in the wiring harness further up away from the starter. With stock wiring, there are 2 main power feeds (Black and Brown) that go on the big post of the starter solenoid along with the positive battery cable. One power feed wire is 10 gauge, the other is 12 gauge. One power feed(10 ga.) feeds the entire car EXCEPT the headlights, the other (12ga.) feeds just the headlights. Both main feed wires have fusible links attached to them. Fusible links are just wire 4 sizes smaller than the wire they feed, so you should have one 14 ga. fusible link, and one 16 ga. fusible link. The fusible link wire is made to sacrifice itself in the event of a major short, so you don't burn the car to the ground. Sounds like some one just eliminated them. In any case, unwrap the harness and see where they made their connections with different wire. My guess is it is damaged/corroded or just piss poor. That's where your problem is. Find the separate feed wires, and then go to NAPA and buy fusible link wires. Make your connections preferably soldering them with shrink wrap and you're done. You won't be the first guy to have to fix what a PO screwed up. Part of the hobby.
The purple wire gets 12 volts when the key is turned to crank. The yellow wire is for points. It feeds 12 volts to the coil during cranking to bypass the resistance wire in the main harness.
Thank you all for the replys! Yeah I’m going to unwrap more of it here in a lil while and see what I find. I don’t have points anymore as it is converted to HEI and the guy that originally did that had it plugged into the resistance wire which after 20yrs of having this car, started getting weak and my spark was all messed up as it got warmer. Took me a while to figure that problem out.
Also a quick question, the wire harness comes off of the starter all the way back to the front of the engine and up to the top and back to the firewall, wouldn’t it make more sense to just come off of the starter and go up the fire wall instead of going over the engine?
Ok, so I unwrapped more of it and alas, a purple and finally found out what the wire that has never been attached was, it’s the yellow that it doesn’t need since it’s HEI now.
