Re: 56 400 push button problem

Posted by Mr.Pushbutton  On 2010/10/15 11:33:21

Somebody call me?

Good advice all, especially re: the pressure switch. I would check the switch, they are availble through the parts guys. I would ohm out the orange wires in the PB harness, the wires that go to the pressure switch. one wire goes into the connector under the IP, the other goes to the fork terminal on the fender well. There have been incidents of those wires suffering meltdowns due to a short somewhere else in the system. All of the power for the logic circuits go through the orange and red/wh wires and the reliability of the system is dependent on every "link in the chain" being 100%.
Re: the starting in gear, get the wiring diagram from the Autolite book (all of them) and compare with what's going on with your car, I suspect some "improvements" have been made, not for the better.
Howard--if the contact finger is heating up it is because the finger is contacting ground at the open end, a rare, but not unheard of occurance. When this happens the finger will glow orange like a stove element, and at that point the temperment is gone out of the finger, and it won't repeatably make contact.
I have done a lot of repair of meltdowns in the finger harness. I am working on a reproduction harness, with the molded rubber block, exactly like the original, I hope to have it available by the next Perrysburg/Fremont event, and available for my customers.
I rewire all motors now, the insulation is all over half a century old now and crumbling. The finger (logic) harness is equally as old, although that wire seems to stay "live" longer. It's still old, and so many of the units have had various meltdown episodes, and then there is the topic of
monkey-work. This system had its teething problems, and there were issues when new. Every garage mechanic who can probably rebuild an engine or transmission, and make sensitive adjustments intellegently thinks they are an auto electrical expert and the blue-crimp connectors abound!
Look the whole thing over closely, even to the point of un-wrapping the logic harness to examine every inch of the wiring for meltdowns and "improvements".