Rewire Problems

Manage to have a look at the dash electrics problem today. Weather still crap but most of the messing was inside the cab.
I reconnected all the cables that I snipped back the other day, but still had no power to the dash clocks.

Decided to bite the bullet and rip out the clocks in order to trace the cables back into the loom. If I couldn't find a multi-plug that had come unclipped, I could trace the cables back to source or rewire each instrument from scratch (but was not relishing that task).

Everything seemed to be where it was supposed to be. As the problem caused all the dash to be dead and not just one or two items, it seemed to point to an earthing issue. If I could identify & re-fit an earth (without an electrical schematic) it may remedy the fault.

After all this bad luck, it was only right that I would drop on a bit of good luck. The other work I had done involved fitting an alarm. This was fitted directly to the Sprinter battery, so did not interfere with any of the Mercedes/ambulance wiring. However, I did share an earth bolt under the bonnet.......

A quick inspection found a tatty 'chock-block' that had been used previously to splice a connection, with a skinny brown earth wire corroded that had come out of a connection. Must have been when I undid the earth bolt from the cluster. It seemed too good to be true, but I reconnected it to the chock-block and voila!! Everything back up & running. (dash in a thousand bits though)

I stripped back the cable then soldered & taped the joint to prevent this re-occuring. 

The cluster of earth connections on the engine bay bulkhead.....

                                                       

Happy Days

I then decided that as the dash was now ripped out, it would be prudent to give that a bit of a revamp. There are a number of screw holes and cut-aways from loads of ambulance related equipment that had been stuck all over it. Not sure yet whether to fill & paint or fill & upholster......