Re: Randy Berger's 1956 Caribbean

Posted by Randy Berger On 2010/4/15 23:36:57

I was supposed to take the front seat out and take both front and rear seats to the trim shop. The Carib fired up OK, but I couldn't shift gears?? I had all the tranny stuff off the fender when I replaced it and the wiring to put it on the new? fender is pretty simple. I started searching for a misplaced wire or an accidental short. I found nothing except the circuit breaker was very warm and clicked at a steady pace?? I checked all the wiring and could find nothing wrong. When I disconnected the push-button unit under the dash, the circuit breaker quit pulsing?? After several false leads I finally narrowed it down to the PB six-connection relay. I removed it and pried the cover off but could see no immediate problem. The contacts did look burnt so I took the relay home and cleaned up the contacts with a point file. I also increased the air gap in the one set of contacts to agree with the other set which had a wider air gap. They were also slightly out of alignment which I corrected. I reinstalled the relay without the PB control(buttons) hooked up. Manually depressing each contact set caused the PB motor to run in both directions. I reconnected the PB multi wire plug and when I reconnected the battery the motor ran to the point where the PB unit was set. The buttons work fine now. I believe one pair of the relay contacts were burnt together and the relay was trying to run the motor in two directions at once. I can visualize no other possibility. I can pull the car out tomorrow and remove the front seat and then off to the trim shop to mortgage$$ my home.
I have never heard of this relay failing like that - Mr PB, do you have any opinion on this? I've been driving these PB-equipped cars a long time and never ran into this.

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