Eagle

I think those boxes are galvanized, so it may be a function of how well the test probes make contact, and whether they're contacting the plating or the underlying steel. Also, if whatever is energizing the box is contacting the outside, it may be a question of how well the current passes through the exterior coating to the steel box, and then from the steel box through the interior coating to the test probe.

WOOD studs? 42-year old WOOD studs? YIKES! Which way is the current flowing -- studs positive and neutral negative, or neutral positive (?!?!?) and studs negative? The house wiring is Romex, right (plastic sheath, not metal armored cable, a.k.a. BX)? Wall finish is sheetrock? Possibly a random nail or screw nicked a black (positive) conductor and is transferring power into the stud. Are all the studs energized, or just one or a few?

Rear axle is an easy fix. Especially if it's a 2WD and it's going to be a street machine, even a Dana 35 is adequate for that, and people are throwing those away.

https://comancheclub.com/topic/48710-diy-projects-writeups-master-search-index/ Is your truck manual or automatic?

Ah! You are extrapolating. I commented above that the breaker panel can be grounded to the water service pipe or iron or steel well casing, but the connection MUST be made within 5 feet of where the water pipe enters the structure. That was to code, and that's still allowed by code. What is NOT allowed by code -- not now and I'm pretty certain not in 1967 -- is to ground individual receptacles (and/or light fixtures) to the plumbing piping running throughout the house. And that's what your electrician did in the attic. That's dangerous. Even if he installed a jumper to bridge the PEX (which you did not mention his doing), it's still dangerous.

Where are you reading that that's the way it used to be done? I'm a lot older than you are, and I've been at this game since just about the time that house was built (my first job in an architect's office was in 1966). I've never seen it done that way, and your house is the first time I've even heard of it being done that way. I'm living in the house my parents had built in 1950, and it sure wasn't done that way.

I took Pete's image and modified it a bit

I'm far from an expert on the NEC. I am licensed as a building inspector, but my expertise isn't in the electrical side of the codes. That said, I don't think it was ever allowed to ground outlets through the building's plumbing system. As I explained, that creates the possibility of energizing the entire plumbing system in the event of a ground fault in a device upstairs. That's not just a technical nonconformity -- that can kill you.

Plumbing cannot be the grounding conductor for the devices in the house. That's a violation of the NEC. The individual outlets (either permanent light fixtures or receptacles) should be grounded back to the breaker panel grounding bus bar. The panel itself has to be grounded. That can be grounded to a water service, but the connection must be made within five feet of where the water service pipe enters the building. Incorrect. The whole point of providing grounded outlets is so that if an appliance (maybe an old electric drill, or a hair dryer, or whatever) has an internal fault and allows the hot wire to contact the case/enclosure, that current will be carried back to the breaker box and then to ground rather than grounding through you. If the grounding wire is connected to the house plumbing -- on the house side of the PEX, where it's electrically isolated from the ground connection to the water service -- then a fault with any device will energize the plumbing piping and anyone who touches the piping or water from the piping may become the path to ground and will get zapped.

Something (that photo) tells me you need a new fuse panel.

From the 2014 NEC -- Section 250.5(A): I don't think grounding to a plumbing pipe somewhere in the house is what the NEC has in mind, Section 250.8: By "listed" in #8, the code means listed by a recognized testing agency such as Underwriters Laboratories (UL), and installed in accordance with the methods spelled out in the listing. This is getting above my pay grade, so I just called a friend who is a master electrician and a licensed electrical inspector. When I got to the part about connecting the white wire upstairs to the plumbing, he about jumped out of his skin. He said that would energize the entire plumbing system in the house and you could get zapped just sitting on the throne to take a dump. My friend is now interested. Where -- exactly -- is the PEX in the system, and where did the guy make the new grounding connection beyond the PEX -- in the basement, or outside of the foundation?

What good does connecting to the plumbing upstairs do if that plumbing is isolated from ground by the length of PEX? That can work only if he installs a jumper to connect (bond) the metal plumbing pipes on either side of the PEX with one another.

That makes sense. And I hope that makes it a relatively easy fix. Please let us know what he's doing to create the new ground.

I agree -- that doesn't look very good. More important, the fuse panel is two parts. One part is on the engine side of the firewall, the part in your photo is the other side. To really investigate the condition, you need to remove the screw that holds the two halves together, separate them, and inspect those contacts.

As I think we have already determined, the ground wire was clearly added at some point after the house was built. It comes into the box through a separate opening on the bottom, not through the top with the hot and neutral conductors. Stupid me, I was about to write that it's a code violation because it doesn't have a strain relief or a protective bushing at the opening in the box. Then I woke up and remembered it's a ground wire, so it doesn't have to be insulated and it's supposed to touch the box (:duh:), so an insulating bushing would be counter-productive.

That's not especially helpful since wire size is rated by amperage, not voltage.

I stated that incorrectly. There should be no current in the grounding conductor (or the metal boxes) at all if there's nothing plugged into the outlets. The grounding conductor (the third hole in a 3-prong receptacle) is there to protect the operator if there's a fault inside an appliance or device that would allow current to energize the outer enclosure that people can touch. By providing a path to ground for such stray currents, it's supposed to prevent the stray current from going to ground through you when you pick up or touch the defective device. Again to save me having to go back through the entire discussion -- do any of these circuits have both light fixtures and wall outlets on the same circuit?

Correct -- there should be current in the grounding side only if/when there's a fault in the system. I hate to suggest that it's time to spend money, but -- it may be time to spend some money. It's almost impossible to track down phantom problems in an electrical system, especially when the wiring is all concealed in existing construction. You may need to hire a qualified electrician to run a "Megger" test to try to isolate which circuit or circuits is/are causing the problems. http://insulationresistancetest.com/ Not all electricians have the equipment to do a Megger test so, if you call someone in, be sure to ask if he/they have the equipment and if he/they are experienced and qualified to use it.

No idea, they run through the wall somewhere and I've been unable to locate their destination anywhere in the crawlspace or attic. I can't help thinking they are part (maybe even all) of the problem. To save me going back through the entire thread -- where is the main electrical panel grounded to? Does it ground to a water pipe, to a well, or to a pair of grounding electrodes (big metal stakes) driven into the ground and buried? Story: My house was built in 1950. I know this exactly because my parents had the house built. This was the boonies in 1950. I have a well, and when the house was built the electrical system was grounded to the steel well casing through a connection to the pipe leading from the well to the pump, which is located in the basement. Along the way, at some point while my parents were still alive the pipes from the well to the house failed and were replaced with plastic. But nobody thought to do anything about adding a ground to replace what was now a broken connection. The grounding conductor from the fuse panel (which was later replaced with a more modern breaker panel) leads from the panel in the garage to the basement, where it's clamped to a length of 3/4" copper pipe that comes through the wall from outside, about 4 feet down from grade level. The problem is, that 3/4" copper pipe hasn't been connected to anything for about forty years. I finally figured all this out when I signed up for DirecTV about fifteen years ago. I knew where the dish was going to mount so I prewired the interior of the house to that location because I wanted to avoid having a bunch of wires running around the outside of my house. When the installers arrived, the first thing they wanted to do was run a ground wire from the dish location half way around the house to where the electrical service comes in. They said this was required by the NEC (National Electrical Code). I wasn't convinced, so I sent them away until I could do my homework. It turned out they were right, but they were wrong. When I got back to work (which, at the time, was in a town building inspection department), I talked to my boss. He knew the guy at the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) who writes the NEC Handbook, so he called him. And that guy didn't know the answer -- he had to research it and call us back. It took him a day or two. When he called back, he had a code section to point to. Satellite dishes do require grounding. BUT -- the ground wire isn't supposed to be more than 'X' feet long (I don't remember what 'X' is, but it's about a quarter of how far the satellite guys wanted to run their wire), and it's supposed to be straight, or nearly straight (they were going to make at least four right-angle bends). So I decided to do it right, since I knew the satellite guys weren't going to. I bought a new ground rod and drove it into the ground right below where the dish was going to go, and I ran a #6 wire from the ground rod up to the dish location. BUT -- and this is where I think your problem may lie -- the NEC allows for supplemental grounds such as what I installed, BUT it requires that any supplemental ground be "bonded" (connected) to the primary building ground (the NEC calls it the "primary grounding electrode system"). So I had to find where my electrical panel grounded, and connect to that. And that's when I discovered that the panel was grounded to a copper pipe that didn't go anywhere. So I started over from scratch. Back to Lowe's, bought two more ground rods and a long length of #6 wire. I drove the two new ground rods in the front of the house, near the well and near the electrical panel. Then I ran a new grounding #6 conductor from the panel to the first new ground rod, and then from that to the second new grounding rod. And then I ran another #6 wire from the supplemental ground rod in the back of the house through the basement and connected it to the new ground rods in the front. That's the "bonding" jumper. What that does is to ensure that everything is at the same electrical potential, which is what's necessary to prevent stray currents such as what you're encountering. This is why I'm interested in where those "new" add-on grounding wires go, because I suspect they aren't bonded to the building's primary grounding electrode system. And that is important. Side story -- when DirecTV came back, it was a different crew. These guys spoke English, and they actually seemed to know what they were doing. My call was mid-afternoon on a Friday, and when they showed up they were thinking they weren't going to get home (in the next state!) until very late. When they saw that the house was already wired, and the grounding conductor was right there waiting for them so all they had to do was mount and aim the dish and plug in the tuning boxes, they were ecstatic. They said it was the easiest installation they had ever done, and the only one they had ever seen that actually met the NEC.

No need to try -- it won't work. The floor pans are different, especially for the rear mount locations. The seats would end up being set too high and at a very odd angle.

The metal outlet boxes were grounded by an external wire that appears to have been added later. Where does that wire go?

If you have the cluster out of the vehicle, you can run test leads from the sensors directly to the posts on the various gauges to test them. There are contacts in the one of the diagnostic port blocks for the tachometer. All the other gauges, I believe, have the same ohm range -- 0 to 88 ohms, -- so you could use a test lead setup from either the temp sender or the oil pressure sender to check them all. (Except volts -- but that's easy to test with a direct connection to the battery.)

AMC used the T4 and T5 as "alternate standard" transmissions in the 1984 and 1985 Cherokee because they were able to source enough AX-4 and AX-5 transmissions. By 1986 I think the supply line issues had been worked out. I don't think I've ever heard of the T4 and T5 being used in 1986.

It may have been installed in accordance with whatever the code was for that jurisdiction in 1967, but the problems he's finding pretty conclusively prove that someone, at some time, made some "improvements" that very clearly were not to code. A code-compliant electrical system won't have stray current leaking all over the place and electrifying the mortar in the kitchen backsplash.

The late model XJ flasher is a combination unit that does both the turns and the hazards in one unit. And it's electronic, and it's about two or three times the price of the most expensive flasher you can find for the early XJs and MJs. I don't think it's sensitive to the number of lamps in the circuit -- my wife's 2000 XJ with trailer package and my 2000 XJ without trailer package take the same flasher unit. The 2000 XJ factory parts book only shows one part number for the flasher module, not a separate part number with trailer tow.