My '66 Skylark has a power top and windows. Recently I gutted the dash to restore it including removing the wiring harness and since I put it back together the windows and top won't work. The windows and top each have a wire that plugs into an accessory tab on the fuse box for power. There are 12 volts at the tabs and at the switches on the other end but when I engage the switch the line voltage drops to zero both at the switch and at the tabs on the fuse box. Is this normal? Everything else works. It starts and the headlights, turnsignals ect. work. The windows and top worked fine before. What could've happened that would only affect those two things? Please help, my brain hurts.
If the voltage drops to zero when you activate the accessories, I suggest a defective connection to that point. If the connection cannot handle the current pulled by one of these motors, the voltage at the connection will drop to zero. Make sure all of the connections to those accessories are intact, and if necessary work your way back to the battery, through the fuse box, looking for a spot where the voltage does not drop when those accessories are activated. The problems will be between where the voltage drops and where it does not. Ray
Ray, thanks for your response. I checked every connection from the motors all the way to the fuse box. I even checked both sides of the circuit breaker for these accessories and had voltage drop at all points. Then I checked at the lug on the engine compartment side of the fuse box where the hot wire comes from the starter and no voltage drop there. I then ran a jumper wire from that lug in through the firewall to the plug ends for the window and top motors that usually plug in to the fuse box and eureeka, they worked! So, I guess the problem is in the fuse box itself. Tomorrow I'm going to pull the harness back out and see if I can see the problem but I'm sure I'll be making the hour or so drive to the junk yard where I know I can get another harness. Thanks again.
