[ctduncan]

After wrestling with (AND ACTUALLY FIXING!) a number of electrical issues on my daughter's '85 FJ60, I've learned more than I ever wanted to know about automotive electrical over the past two weeks. For anyone with the need to know, there are two great resources I've found.

First, a Motorbooks Workshop book called "How to Diagnose and Repair Automotive Electcrical Systems" by Tracy Martin. Excellent and simple to read, and I found this at my local library.

Second is an auto electric "course" at www.autoshop101.com/trainmodules/circuitprotection/101.html. Begins with very simply explanations of all things electric on cars and gets deeper from there.

Hope these two resources are of help to any of you needing electrical answers. I'm happy to share what I've learned as well.

[PAFJ]

Great to hear you got everything squared away!

[ctduncan]

Thanks for your thoughts! It was a challenge, but my learning curve is on the uptick. I'm still learning what those various parts are but at least know how to find and fix a short!

[Tinker]

So which one was more helpful on finding & fixing the short?

[TheJackRabbit]

CTDunan: You got electricity in your Land Cruiser!?! When did that start?

[ctduncan]

Next week running water!

The book was most helpful...as he offers a very simple and systematic approach to determining/locating/fixing the problem(s). The web site gives a more detailed explanation of some of the materials the book talks about i.e. Fusible Links. Once this problem started all I heard about were Fusible Links, but nobody was sure exactly what they are. They're explained briefly in all the tech books, but in such a way that its assumed you know what they are and how they're made. The book tells you the same thing....how to test them, etc., but the web site tells you what they are, how they're made, how they're not particularly safe any longer and how to replace them with the much more convenient MaxiFuse.

I did notice that the site only shows about 27 pages of his tech guide. I'd converted the entire site to pdf, thinking I'd get the 27 pages but ended up with about 360 pages...covering everything from Fuses to Capacitors to Resistors. It's technical reading, but tells you everything you need to know about what those little suckers are all doing under the hood. It's about 4.3mb and I'd be happy to email it to anyone interested, or to someone that wants to post the file for ftp download.

[lovetoski]

My son hosted the Primer on his website.

http://blog.liberalgeek.com-a.google...icalPrimer.pdf

To download, rightclick on the link, click "save target as" (or "save link as") then download and enjoy!

[stkreit]

I am struggling with an undrivable fj60. It blows the white-line fusible link, and I don't want
to dismantle the entire body looking for short-to-ground. I would expect that the harness
gets stressed in the same locations on others' trucks, so I'm looking for clues.

Stuart

[dogboy2]

Doug..... YOU ROCK!!

and thanks to your son for hosting that PDF file -- what a great resource!



-dogboy- '87 FJ60