Triumph Repair: triumph tr7 electrical, inline fuse, triumph tr7

Question
just start work on a 1980 triumph tr7 and found that the electrical system is a mess.  I have found wirers just hanging and going no where, wires have been cut and added to.  what is the best way to find which wire is connected to what and if there is a problem with the connection.  I have purchase several books but still can't figure it out.  Is there a simpler diagram for the not so smarts?

Answer
Hi David,

Any time you have an electrical "Mess", I found the best way to correct it is first get a wiring diagram and pick ONLY ONE circuit and trace that circuit ONLY until you correct it. Then pick ONE more circuit and do the same. It is foolish to attempt to unscramble a mess of wires and try to figure out where everything goes.

When I am faced with such as that (and have been, many times) I first disconnect one post of the battery and put an inline fuse or a circuit breaker between the post and the cable. You can't start the car but there is no reason to do so when working on it. This way, as you work you don't have to worry about shorting something and burning a harness.

At first I would at times burn my fuse and not know it and make several tests before I realized that I had no power so I added an old door buzzer from an MG across my fuse so "when" not "If" I would burn a fuse the buzzer would go off alerting me that I had blown a fuse. Later I added a small light bulb in parallel also so that when I would blow a fuse I would get the buzzer but also a light when the shop was noisy. I later replaced the in-line fuse with a circuit breaker. 35 amp works well.

There are no short cuts in repairing wiring. Just take one circuit at a time and continue until everything works and no left over wire ends.

I have posted a wiring diagram for you on my web site. Go to http://mg-tri-jag.net/80-TR-71x1.jpg for the diagram and change the suffix to 80-TR-7-21x1.jpg for the index.

Howard