tony sayer wrote:
In article , Grimly
Curmudgeon scribeth thus
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.

Some impurity surely?.

After all Copper is copper its what's mixed in with it ?...
exactly.

Needs to be mixed with pretty high levels of some corrosive salt or acid
before its gonna do it in.

and re-smelting will slag that out mostly.