Driving yesterday in town my truck died. I coasted to a stop. I lost all power in cab. I jumpered the main feed to a good section of the fusable link and drove it home. It now has the following problems. Speedo is dead, voltage spikes between 15.5 and 16 volts. The jumper was hot to touch after sitting over night.

I have not driven for more than 5 minutes since because of the spikes. Its good thing I have a bicycle to ride.

Does anybody have any ideas what it could be?

 

Your speedo is dead because it does not have power and the voltage spikes because the computer probably doesn't have power which is the voltage regulator. Do what I did and replace all the fusible links with either a fuse box or inline fuses. That jumper wire is hot because there is a lot of power being drawn through it or its shorted out somewhere.

 

Thats not a bad idea! Do you have any idea what size fuses for which links.

 

No I just kind of judged by the size of the wires smaller wires got a 15amp and a bigger wire got a 25 or 30 amp. One problem I have is the one the headlights is on might be a little small and I might need to put a bigger wire from the battery to my fuse box. I'm thinking two 20amp fuses in parallel for the headlight circuit.

 

I would strongly suggest getting a 30 amp circuit breaker. Fuses in paralell tend not to work well, because they never have perfectly matched impedance . . .

 

So what do you think would happen if you had two fused in parrallel if you had an overload one fuse would blow then the other fuse would blow so your still protecting the circuit right?