Wire (indicator light) meltdown behind dash?

[gavtheoldskater]

Bit of a baptism by fire this return to bay ownership for me!

Driving along earlier I suddenly had smoke pour out of my dash accompanied by a weird broken buzzer type sound.

I popped off my dash and found that the black wire that goes to the indicator bulbs on the speedo had melted. However by disconnecting all the bulbs on the speedo I was able to restart and make the few miles home. No buzzer sound.

Prior to taking the van out today I'd had the battery earth lead off and had cleaned up the lead and the chassis to get a better earth so not sure if that might have been a reason?

Before I take a good look tomorrow and start tracing the burn out wire to replace it can anyone suggest anything I can check to try and discover what might have caused the meltdown?

 

[georgeyv]

I had a similar problem, one of the switches under the clocks (headlight in my case) had shorted out on the back of the clocks and melted an earth wire.

 

[Trikky2]

The short you describe won't have anything to do with your work on the battery terminals.

 

[gavtheoldskater]

turned out, after some looking, it was the earth wire that runs from the fuse box to the metal surround of the speedo housing that had melted.

after replacing all of that, and cleaning up some badly bodged connections, it was ok for a sec then suddenly the fuel gauge freaked out and there was a wisp of smoke.

took the housing apart at that stage and it turned out that a small fibre washer that prevents the fuel gauge earth connector touching the metal enclosure had fallen off and it was this that seemed to be causing my short.