Bleedin typical- I've just quit smoking and the Landy has started. I've been battling for the last few weeks to try to fathom the mysteries of the wiring that has accumulated behind the dash in the last 40 years and though I was getting somewhere but today a new horror has presented itself. She's a 1971 Series 3 Diesel with a Sherpa diesel in- at some point someone has wired in a switch of some kind on the ignition circuit (at a guess I'd say on the heater plugs circuit- this is a pretty flimsy affair but as it was working ok, I left it alone- with the switch closed the engine starts on the key, then to stop you flip the switch to open as the key has no effect). When I pulled her out of the garage today, I noticed a faint puff of smoke near the dash but just assumed it was my nicotine addled brain imagining things- I then did some tinkering with other non electrical bits- and when I came to put her away there was some more smoke and a burnt plastic smell. Thankfully I caught it ok, no fire, and then disconnected the battery to be safe (and to have a poke around the ignition wiring). From what I can see one of the plastic covers on a heavy-ish duty spade connector on the back of the ignition barrel has been happilly melting away causing the smoke and smell- this is on the larger of the two brown wires and from the wiring diagrams (as much as they are relevant now) it looks like this is feed for the heater plugs.

So.. the question is... any ideas as to how to trace this fault. I'd assumed that the heater plugs would be on with the key switched to 'heat' and then disengage so can only assume that there's a short somewhere. Would a faulty heater plug cause this, or am I looking at something else odd. The only tinkering that I can think that I've done that could have an impact has been to do with indicators and flasher units which are both on the ignition switched circuit (the indicators seem ok).

Short of calling in the armed police and firebrigade to investigate the source of this mystery vapour. Any ideas...

Cheers

Phil