The other day i used a little air compressor I bought you plug into your cigarette lighter, okay? (That means there's a story of a screw up coming.) I couldn't get the end onto the valve on the inner tube to use it although I did turn it on for a few seconds about three times then gave up. After buying the compressor I noticed at the bottom of the instruction sheet it read, "Warning do not use with the old 3 amp. cigarette lighter but use with the 8 amp. power point for power." Yep, I knew that and had used the old one like this one I just bought for years with no problem until it wore out.
So I figured, "Yeah I see those instructions I'm supposed to use it with a heavier power point socket but it'll only take a minute. Besides I used that other one for years and nothing ever happened.", so what the heck, right? Yeah, famous last words.
After i stopped using it everything was fine until I got home later and for got to run an errand and cranked the truck up again. I got about a block and a half and smoke stated coming out from under the dash. I stopped without turning the truck off to look under the dash in hopes of seeing what the heck the smoke was coming from. In the process I grabbed the wiring going up to the ignition switch and it was hot but that's not where the smoke was coming from.
I raced home and parked. Later I got under the dash to see if I could see what had happened. Sure enough I discovered the Alt. signal wire had apparently fried melting itself into the wires it was tied to and slightly melted some of them together.
I got the schematic out to figure out what I had done and what i discovered, and maybe some of you would be able to straighten me out on some of the details but when I pluged that pump into the cigarette lighter, which is that #16(?) orange wire fed 12 volts all the time goes directly to the ignition switch and back to the fuse block. None of the fuses were blown but the draw from tjhat pump must have burned that alt. signal wire but not bad enough to keep me from leaving from where I was at using that puimp. But the next time I cranked the truck, that signal wire got melted to the orange wire it shares in the ignition switch plug, same hole, and fed 12 volts into the alt. signal wire. And since that signal wire only carries 12 volts in it until the alternator field is energized then is disconnected through the voltage regulator, suddenly had 12 volts on it all the time and caught fire. Man that thing was fried from one end of it to the other. but thank God it only slightly stuck itself to some of the other wires and I was able to clean all that up.
I'll solder another signal wire on tomorrow, But are my findings about what happened about right?
