Was taking our newly restored 73 2.0 out for its second attempt and although the car is not dialed in yet (another challenge) we hit a problem when turning on the fog lights. After 1-2 min with the fog lights on it started to smoke and I immediately turned off the switch and it stopped.

I am confident that the harness was good because Jeff restored it.

Any ideas what might have happened to cause this?

Thanks

Possibly a short somewhere. You are going to have to trace the wires from fuse to switch to fogs to make sure nothing has melted.

Do you know what color wire was smoking?

I have not stuck my head under there yet.

Note: When installing the speakers for the first time last week the mechanic realized that the left side main harness needed tweaking and to make room he pulled the fuse box and adjusted the harness. We got the car back last night and verified that the fog lights worked but strangely the switch did not light up, which is our favorite feature.

Lastly, the car is running poorly for the first time...

We will see on Monday

Hopefully none of the wiring harness got pinched or punctured in the process of reorganizing it, if I remember correctly the fog light RELAY'S power is fused, but the fog light SWITCH'S power isn't.

With the fog light switch lamp not lighting up when it's turned on, I'm wondering if the Grey/Red wire going from the fog light switch to the fog light relay's coil is pinched or otherwise shorting out, dragging the voltage down so low that the switch can't light, but it's still enough to trigger the relay.

Something isn't connected properly and if you have smoke, your harness is damaged.

Exceptionally difficult to diagnose over the computer. The only way to deal with this is trace down all the wires using a color coded wiring diagram. Sorry, but you've got some work to do.

Thanks! The shop has a bit of work to do and we should see the car in 2021

I have four cars in the shop... time to look for another mechanic.

cheers

The British car guys have this problem all the time. Once the smoke gets out things never work the same again.

Click to view attachment

Sounds to me like you need a conversation with your speaker mechanic! He did some tweaking all right.

the mechanic was a master but over the years he has become less reliable. I won’t blame it on age but at 70, I’m going to miss a few things as well.

The major problem is that the car is highly restored and these types of setbacks could mean 3-6 months of work to remove the harness, restore the harness, and reinstall.

I am tired of spending top dollar and getting .50 cents in dilligence.

I came to the same conclusion years and years ago. I can't find conscientious workmanship in hardly anything.

Best bet is learn to read schematic diagram (with color code) and do the work yourself. Use resources and expertise on this site once you've narrowed down what happened and to what circuit.

The sad reality is that in may cases with cars this old, you're really just paying someone shop rate to learn on your car. You can learn on your own car for free (but does cost your time). If you're not already familiar with electrical basics, spend some time on YouTube 1st.

We live in an amazing time, a wealth of knowledge, experience and expertise is only a mouse click away. For crying out loud, MIT now posts course content on the internet for FREE!

The trouble is learning to sort web fact from fiction on the rest of the Web.

Most likely is you will find one or two wires than need help, replace them and be good.

cheers

Here's the wiring for the foglights. No fuses between the battery and the foglight switch.