On my 83 TA I went to the gas station and started up the car to leave and my gauges completely freaked. I hit the gas and it died then there was nothing. No power at all. Tried to get it jumped, not a thing. After taking a look, it looks like the small wire coming off the battery is falling apart at a splice. I'm thinking it may be some fusible link issue or something. Not going to be able to dig in till Monday. Any thoughts our suggestions on where to start and what to consider would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

Yup, most likely a fusible link...

There's 2 of them I think, down at the starter. Each feeds about half of the major electrical load in the car. One of them provides the battery feed to the ignition switch. Sounds like that's what went.

I suspect if you went around and checked things in the car, you'd find quite a few that still work... headlights might for example, power seats, brake lights, or various other things. If so it's almost positively a fusible link.

Small wire coming off the battery at the + terminal is the charging wire from the alt; at the - terminal, is the body ground.

 

So some more information and aggravation. I got home today and stuck the key in the ignition and the dash lights up. Turn the key, and it acts like the battery is low, start to do some more investigating, right. Well the battery is charged, 12V+ but when I check it down stream a bit it's only reading 8V. I tighten up the screw-in posts on the battery and fiddle with the wires a bit, bam, 12V downstream. Now the car starts right up. I still think the positive battery cable is shot so I'm changing that out. Seems to me like one of the wires is heating up and separating. Still fusible link is a suspect.

In response to Sofaking, yes the headlights still came on, but the motors didn't flip the lights up. I'll take a closer look at those fusible links later. Thanks for the info.

 

This happened to my car 2 years ago, the wire that feeds the system from the starter was corroded, some things worked some didn't. The head lights were a good indication, they would come on but the doors wouldn't open. hope this helps.

 

So just to put an update/conclusion to the story. My Positive battery cable was garbage, so I replace that, but that was not the root cause to the problem as discussed. When I then went to investigate the fusible link from the starter, I pulled on the heavier gauge portion to try to give myself some extra room to work and the wire pulled right out of the crimp connector. I had this same fusible link go maybe 6 years ago and had it 'professionally' repaired. Apparently the guy who fixed it decided he could jam the 12 gauge wire into a 16 ga crimp connector... he couldn't. So the wire wasn't really crimped in. I replaced the fusible link and this time used a stepped crimp connector, 16ga on one end and 12 on the other. Everything crimped up right and so far so good.

Now onto the next thing...