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SDCer Kieth Ogden reported a dead short on a 1964 champ pickup. When the battery was reconnected after winter storage the battery was drained in just one day. The problem was a short in the brake light switch on the firewall mounted master cylinder. The switch had shorted to ground internally over the winter. When investigating this always-hot (unfused, unswitched) circuit, the positive wire to the switch was so hot it could not be touched. The heat from the internal short had slightly melted the insulation from both terminal boots. Keith's experience again underscores our continuing campaign to encourage, at the least, disconnecting batteries from vehicles in storage. Even more to the point would be adding a major fusible link between the wiring harness and the stud on the side of the starter solenoid, the stud from which current is drawn to power all of the vehicle's electrical system except the starter motor itself.
The way to protect your vehicle's wiring harness it to install a 10-gauge feed wire and a 14-gauge fusible link.