"Terry Coombs" wrote in message
...
...
I'm thinking that Steve is right , it's inside the harness . I
spent over an hour today minutely inspecting that harness for any
kind of damage that might be the short . I'm tied up tomorrow and
Thursday , but on Friday I'll be pulling that fuse block and
probably running a new power supply wire outside the harness . As
far as what conditions cause the short , that's what is weird . I
have over a mile of rough (ROUGH!) unpaved road to get to the
highway , the radio died a couple of miles after I hit the paved
road .

--
Snag
Yes , I'm old
and crochety - and armed .
Get outta my woods !


You might research how to make a reliable splice in vehicle wiring,
since vibrating copper wire tends to work-harden and break. When
engine electronics expanded in the 1970's even the engineers had
trouble with connections.

When I was wiring prototype electric vehicles the company had the
proper expensive crimping tools. Soldering is usually bad because it
can create a stress concentration where the wires exit the solder,
which hastens breakage. The motor in my Maytag washing machine failed
that way.

I don't have a 100% perfect record of crimp-splicing wires at home
with cheap consumer or worn industrial tooling and like welding it's a
muscle-memory type job I'm better at doing than describing.