Cars - What a weekend!

After flogging my car for a week and seemingly evrything going wrong, I gog
it running this morning and drove it 15 miles to an open local car show. The
lovcal Street Rodders put this show on every Spirng.
Now a little background to my week:

Posted here about my car, I had just rebuilt, not starting. It ia a chopped
66 bug on a 67 pan. I charged the battery and nothing ,turn the key and
silence! So after many suggestions here one worked, The main wire from the
light switch to the key was disconnected. Fixed that.

I still needed to adjust the brakes. When I had the pan rebuilt I had them
convert the 4 brake drums to 4 lug. That is great if the mechanic is
thinking when he doies it. It also never occured to me....that the 4 lug
drum has brake adjustment holes in the backing plate and wide 5 drums hav
the hole in the drum. So,you guessed it he put on 4 lug drums on the back
and 5 lug backing plate . No way to adjust the brakes! Not too big a
problem, I drilled some holes and used my airdrive rotary file to open them
up. Done, adjusted the brakes. Decided to take the car for a quick spin down
the street and back to check everything out. I get about a block from the
house and the gas pedle is on the floor but the engine won't rev and dies.
as I hit the brakes. It won't restart, so onh our first hot and 90% humidity
day, I have to push the car back home two blocks. At least the street was
flat. Now on the verge of a heart attack, I call it quits and pack it in.

Sunday morning, today,I get out in the shop to try to get the car going so I
might make it to the car show.

Connect the battery, cranks but won't start.
Change to new plugs, no one is home to watch for me th see if I am getting a
spark,
Cranks, won't start!

So I am sitting there going over all the possibilities it could be when I
remember that when the car died yesterday, I caught a whiff of something
electricle getting fried!

So I get a flkashlight and check the fuses, sure enough there it is a fried
fuse , the first one near the steering column.
I replace the fuse and voila! she fires right up. So I sit there enjoying my
genious, I decide again to take a quick run down the street and back, as I
pull out of the garage I put on the brakes and I hear a pop and the engine
dies. Blown fuse again. At least I am still mostly in the garage.

So I open the hood to trace down the problem. I getout my wiring diagram and
trace down all the 6 wires to and from this fuse. There were two black with
yellow stock coded wires, They looked to be going to the head lights on the
left, since I had replaced the trhee prong plug on this light I figured that
must be it.

I also pulled off the drivers fron wheel to folloe the wires in a nd around
this area. My car has a two switch brake master cylinder, and I remember
that when I was putting everything back there was an extra set of two wires
I assumed they went to thebrake s, Nope they were for the horn! so everytime
I hit the brake I was hitting the horn and shorting the fuse. Now all works
as it should,well almost!

I headed down the roadto the show. I noticed that the farther I drove the
harder iot was to drive slow. The brakes were dragging and getting hot.

To make this already long winded story short, I got there and on the way
home, I had to stop a few times to let the brakes cool . Whle sitting on the
side of the road, the only people that stopped to help were other VW guys!

I even won an award for the best ipmport!

Mike