Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember The Natural Philosopher
saying something like:

I put this
down to the re-cycling of scrap copper, with impurities above the level
that would have been acceptable in Europe.

NO.

I suspect its a subspecies of this:

http://www.barbadosrc.org/misc/blackwire.php

which is well known, if not so well understood.

Which doesn't address the problem in cars. At all.

I suspect myself its electrochemical attack of copper due to three
things: damp, a salt, and a voltage.

And **** wire.

No. Not **** wire.

Which is the point.