Hello-

I had a bad starter ground wire in my '77 F150 that I changed out and it looks like I managed to break a wire in the process of fishing the ground wire down to the starter. Now, my gauges (except the ammeter), dash lights (except the high beam indicator and brake light), radio, wipers and turn signals don't work. I changed the dash panel fuse with a new 3A fuse and that looks to be OK, and swapped in another instrument cluster to make sure the circuit board wasn't bad but still no joy.

It looks like this wire should go to the wire that I've patched the new white wire to, but making that connection doesn't fix the problem. Any suggestions?




The broken wire comes out of the wiring harness on the mid upper right in the picture above and looks like it used to go back into the harness where I have the white wire patched in in the lower picture

 

Well, fixed.

Turns out it was a loose connection to the ignition switch. Seated the connector (it had wiggled loose when I was replacing the instrument cluster) and everything works as expected.

Still have no idea what that white wire does, but that's for another day.

 

Look on the back of the alternator.
If that's a White w/black stripe wire, it's likely your stator wire. In our case it's used for the carburetor choke.
If your choke works, maybe that other wire was connected to fix it. Or, if you have an aftermarket carb they may have simply bypassed the original (which provides lower voltage) to get a full 12v from the battery for the new carb.

Paul

 

OK, thank you.

There is what looks like an aftermarket choke **** located under the dash. I will check that out.