Watch
the Sparks Fly
Back on the hill Lewis was making
progress. Nearly up the hill he had a few hundred
feet to go on a fairly mild incline. Ascending on
his own power, for some reason he was having problems with
minor bumps. Every time he'd hit a bump in the train
the Jeep would die. We were blaming the problem on
what we thought was a newly installed but poorly tuned
Holley Truck Avenger carburetor, which turned out not to
be the case. We later discovered that his winch was
wired backwards and the positive side of the winch power
cable was connected to the negative side of the battery!
With the Winch main power switch turned on, every time
he'd hit a bump the winch would touch the grill of the
Jeep, sending sparks flying and killing the engine!
Later when we discovered this, we stood puzzled for a
while trying to understand how it didn't fry the battery.
A continuity check showed that the winch wasn't fully
grounded to the frame. We're guessing rust and paint
kept it open enough to allow the Jeep to run at all.
When the winch cable was wired correctly, the Jeep fired
right up and ran better than it ever did. Imagine
that.
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