I went to start my car the other day, turned the key on and waited for it to pull fuel up, next thing bloody great clouds of smoke inside the cab & under the bonnet so i shut my isolator switch straight off ( geez i'm glad i put that in it's easier than trying to disconnect a battery in a hurry ), turns out it melted the dual white wire that runs from the ignition to the fuse box so i replicated the wire and replaced it , checked the rest of the wiring as best as i could and can't see any obvious problems that might of caused this to happen.
Hooked up new wire & watched around the ign switch as i turned the the key to the on position and sure enough it started to heat up the white wire again as well as the 2 brown wires that come off the switch,the heat doesn't appear to be going past the fuse box so i am thinking that my ignition switch has shat itself.The weird thing about it is the bloody car was fine last time i drove it ,put it the shed locked it up no problems. Does this sound feasible?

Its feasible but equally feasible that you have a power wire going to earth somewhere due to a break in insulation somewhere.

You need to trace the wires with a DVM to make sure. Pull the brown wires off and test each of the connections on the ignition switch to see if they work as they should.

It may also well be that when you smoked it the first time that it burnt through the insulation some where along the circuit.

Mike

Your short is further downstream. The browns are unfused connections from 12 volts, and the white wires feed to the switched fuse and to the ignition coil.

The usual procedure is to remove a circuit at a time from the fuse and repeat until you have isolated the fault. Once you have done this you can search out the shorted wire.

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SooperDooperMiniCooperExpertEngineering

All garage work involves equal measures of enthusiasm, ingenuity and a fair degree of irresponsibility.

Thanks guys ,my first impression when it happened the first time was that it had pinched a wire somewhere under the dash because when i went to pull the choke out it was as tight as and didn't want to operate properly but i've since traced that through to the carby's with no sign of anything out of the ordinary, that was just a coincidence i think that it played up at that time , i've just had another quick look around the wiring and so far nothing obvious is staring me in the face. I'll keep looking .

Colin

Thanks Mike & Mick you were both spot on, i got a mate around because i'd run out of idea's ( 2 heads are better than 1 theory ) and after a lot of searching and looking and checking different things we discovered that the electric fuel pump power wire had rubbed through behind the front subframe where it runs , thank god for that i was getting sick of chasing the problem. All's good now car's going again, once again thanks for your help guys.

Colin