Good day all,

I'm still sorting through some of the damage from a underhood fire on my 1966 Olds Toronado. There is some damaged wire coming from just above the heater box that goes to the positive side of the ignition coil that I'd like to replace.

This damaged wire is the white wire with red and black tracer which is the resistor wire that drops the voltage to the coil when the car is running. Now, I do not know what the original configuration is but I think someone has repaired it with a splice. Currently there is the white wire with the tracer spliced to the wire coming from the starter solenoid, which gives the 12V when cranking, and then a damaged wire on the other side of the splice with a bunch of electrical tape on it going to the coil positive.

Is this the configuration that the factory would have had it? Or was there two distinct wires going to the coil (one gives full 12v one gives 7-9v or so)......and no splice at all? Maybe the splice is factory and the damage was just confined to the wire post splice? That factory diagram kinda makes it look like there is a splice, but I'm not too trusting of that diagram because of all the errors I've noticed so far. If the splice is factory, I would assume everything past the splice would be regular wire and not resistor wire?

I hope I'm explaining this well, I can get you guys some photos if required. I'd like to get it back to the way it was prior to the fire, is this resistor wire available?

 

Just a follow up, hoping someone knows. Maybe I am not describing this problem correctly?

 

Sorry, I must have missed this previously. On cars with firewall connectors, the resistor wire started at that connector and ran in one piece to the coil. Since your 66 Toro didn't have a firewall connector, there is a splice where the solid copper transitions to the resistor wire. The wire from the starter should have been crimped in the terminal that bolted to the coil, along with the resistor wire.

 

Ok, thanks Joe. So the two wires should only come into contact with each other right at the coil positive terminal then? Are they crimped in the same barrel usually or two separate spade connectors?

Looks like the cranking positive and the resistor positive have both been damaged right around the firewall and they're both spliced together with a single wire carrying on to the coil positive. I guess that's how the repair shop chose to do the fix. Can I splice in two distinct wires I wonder? I guess it's just the resistor wire that's the concern.

 

The wiring diagram shows it as a two into one splice.........again, the wiring diagram could certainly be wrong:

 

Edit: the PIM implies that there is one connection to the coil, which would support the splice just before that, consistent with the wiring diagram.

 

Ah yes, jeez I forget about that manual all the time. Tons of great info in there and I should have taken a look first. I'll take a snap shot of the splice and post it here.......maybe it will clearly look factory.

 

Had a good look. The single wire coming from one side of the splice going straight to coil positive looks original. It's black with a pink stripe. Ignore all the wire loom, as that was added by me when I was tidying up the wiring a while back. Also the raychem splice in my second picture was a repair I did as well so ignore that too!

Working back to the ignition wire splice, which was covered in electrical tape, it looks factory original to me. I've never seen a splice like that before. Maybe someone can confirm? See my pics below.

 

This is the style of splice crimp used by the factory.

 

That's great news. If that's the case then the only damaged portion of the wire is in the pink/black and is within the last 7-8 inches or so which should be standard copper wire. I should be able to repair that pretty easy.

Thanks for the help!