Rewire

[TonyG]

Dex,

It sounds as though your wiring has got into a bit of a muddle. However, unlike a modern car, the loom on your car is really very straight forward so there is no reason to panic. Clearly, you have a short circuit that is causing wires to over heat and smoke, so you must have put something in the wrong place! Time to take a step back and review what you have done before reconnecting the battery.

First of all, do you have a workshop manual and wiring diagrams? This is pretty vital, particularly if your car still has the original or old wires, which may have faded colours or been altered and/or partly replaced over the years.

The trafficators are fed from the switch; from memory, red to off-side and green to near-side. Unless modified, these do not flash.The trafficator unit has a return wire, which goes to the green dashboard lamp. If the trafficator unit has been changed from the original, this may no longer be working. There is no connection to the side lights unless rear lamps with indicators have been retro-fitted. Even then, the lights should be separate and the only common connection is the earth wire from the unit to the chassis. If this has failed, you may be getting some sort of back feed from indicators to side light or vice versa where some kind of potential difference in power is detected. One sees this sometimes on car trailers usually due to a poor plug connection.

If flashing lights have been added, it is likely that one side of the flasher units have been connected to the feed wires from the switch to the trafficators, with the output from the flasher going to the lamps and onto earth. However, there are a number of ways these could be wired and you will not find this on the wiring diagram. However, a Google search will find you a simple diagram for this. When I did mine i used LED indicator lamps, which draw such a low current that regular flasher units won't heat up enough and flash. As such, I used 12v motorcycle flasher units designed for LED operation. Probably more important to get side flashers working, rather than the semaphore trafficators, which most other motorists are blind to these days.

The side lights are fed from the dash switch to the side lights and then to earth. With the bulbs removed on all four corners, you should be able to test the output wire and get a complete 'dis', rather than a short to earth. Clearly, you also need a test meter to check this.

Hope that helps.

Tony.

[SHyslop]

The subject of a loss of smoke from a Lucas wiring circuit has come up a few times on the internet. It's on a par with the three position Lucas light switch - Off, Dim and Flicker. If the amount of smoke lost seems excessive, the following product might be of interest :

https://www.aulro.com/afvb/technical-ch ... 433-a.html

(Do not read this if you have had a trying day and find nothing amusing in life or cars...)