Sounds like a lose electrical connection somewhere.
I'd check with the positive wires from the battery, as
I've heard of similar problems on other cars when the
battery cables had come off while driving.
--- Tim Klein <tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> My '67 is starting to show a disturbing trend. I'm
> afraid to drive it much until the problem is
> resolved,
> so I hope you good folks can help me. Sorry if this
> message is a bit long, but I wanted to include all
> of the clues.
>
> Once in a while, the car simply dies. The engine
> turns
> off, taking the power brakes and power steering with
> it.
> The brake lights, tail lights, and emergency
> flasher(!)
> all stop working. Suddenly, I'm a big, rolling
> menace
> to society. And after I get the car stopped and put
> it
> in Park, turning the ignition key produces nothing
> but
> silence.
>
> Yesterday this happened to me while I was driving at
> 30 mph.
> Fortunately it was daytime and I was on a
> straightaway, but
> it could just as easily have happened at 65 mph on a
> curvy
> road at night. A passing police officer gave me
> some flares
> to light behind my car to warn away oncoming
> traffic.
>
> I can fix the problem by wiggling a thick bundle of
> wires under the hood near the firewall on the
> driver's
> side -- though sometimes it takes me 15 minutes of
> twiddling before I get lucky, and sometimes it dies
> again
> right after that. Some of those wires enter a black
> rectangular connection block mounted on the
> firewall.
> My mechanic disconnected the block and cleaned all
> of
> the connections, but that didn't solve it. I think
> that block is what appears as "Bulkhead Disconnect"
> on the engine compartment wiring diagram:
>
http://www.imperialclub.com/YearbyYear/1967/WiringDiagrams/
>
> So far, I've been unable to *induce* an episode of
> Sudden Imperial Death Syndrome by wiggling wires, so
> it's been hard to experiment.
>
> What failure could produce such widespread symptoms,
> and yet be fixed (temporarily) by my pushing on
> wires?
> Of course, that bundle of wires could be pushing on
> something else nearby, but it doesn't seem like it.
> Next time it happens, what should I do to trace the
> problem? I'm a duffer, so don't be shy about
> suggesting
> something obvious!
>
> Some more clues:
>
> -- The headlights, courtesy lights in the doors,
> and power
> windows are NOT affected. But everything else
> electrical
> is lost. Am I right in thinking that none of the
> above
> functions are wired through the fuse box? A friend
> of
> mine used a test light (I gotta get me one of those)
> and
> found that there is no power at the fuse box when
> the
> car is suffering one of these episodes.
>
> -- During an episode, if I use a screwdriver to
> short across the terminals of the starter relay, the
> starter does crank, and the radiator fan turns a
> little,
> but the engine doesn't turn over. My friend with
> the
> test light tells me that the starter relay has good
> ground during an episode, but no power on the
> positive
> side.
>
> -- For what it's worth, I replaced the car's
> original
> voltage regulator with a NOS one about a year ago.
> But
> it's on the opposite side of the car from that
> wiring block
> anyway.
>
> -- The problem has happened four times now: Once
> while
> the car was moving forward, once while reversing,
> once
> while idling, and once when the car had been sitting
> overnight in my garage. The first time it happened,
> there
> had been no work done on the car in months, but I
> had
> driven it on a long, hot road trip just before that.
>
> Thank you very much for any help!
>
> Tim Klein
> '67 Crown 4DHT
> Rye, New York
>
>
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