Oi any fooking sparkies in the house???

redhand said:

A friends disco had an electrical fire in his engine bay last week. and fried all the wiring going to the gearbox/handbrake area. I chopped all the burnt wires and replaced the damaged section with the wiring harness from another disco that was getting scrapped. He also had a problem with the starter solenoid not getting a live supply so it wouldn't turn over. I took a feed off the ignition live and wired it direct to the solenoid. So that it's only live whilst cranking the engine over. And it's been fine all week But over the last couple of days it's started playing up and not turning over. Then today he saw smoke coming from the Handbrake lever. and he's just discovered that the handbrake drum is live. I've heard of this happening before but can't remember where or what caused it. Any ideas???

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Are you sure the drum is live? It is normally bad a bad earth using the handbrake cable as an earthing cable.

He said it was crackling when he pulled the handbrake lever up. Not had a chance to get over and look at it yet.

redhand said:

He said it was crackling when he pulled the handbrake lever up. Not had a chance to get over and look at it yet.

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It's a bad or broken earth mate.

get him to stick one end of a jump lead on the negative of the battery and then the other end on the engine and/or gearbox and see if it stops it crackling.

Have txt'd him & told him to check his earth straps and connections.