[Bigblock50]

A week further down the road, the "truck that keeps on giving" is still at it. As discussed in earlier messages, I've corrected the purple wire situation so that the solenoid S terminal now gets a feed directly from the neutral safety switch. That wire had indeed been spliced into under tape, converted to a blue wire, and inserted into the PO's rats nest aftermarket junction box. See attached picture of the hidden splice. That purple wire now goes directly to the solenoid.

Following that, I replaced the burned out fusible link and connected up the junction box so I could try the starter circuit. I didn't get that far. Instead, when I closed the negative side knife switch, I got a major league short and blew the link again. I lifted the leads at the junction box and used my continuity tester, which showed that the red "12R" wire did in fact have a connection to ground. I haven't been working on that circuit in any direct way.

With LockDoc's diagnostic help I thought I had the ignition circuit fixed. I may have, but I can't test it until I can figure out why there is serious short to ground in the "12R" wire with the ignition switch in the off position. I'm spending more time on this than running my farm!

Suggestions welcome on a good procedure. What's the expression, so close and yet so far?

Bill in Luray