Low Resistance inter-Circuit – Toyota Land Cruiser 1986

I lied about the Landcruiser

Car is an (unlisted) 1986 Daihatsu Skywing (Taiwan only model but mostly identical to a Mk2 Charade) which has suffered polarity reversal. Alternator seems unsurprisingly dead, but I’m more concerned about the wiring loom.

I took all the 10 panel fuses out, and (with battery and alternator out and key on) checked continuity between the half-circuits

Excluding earths (some of which could of course have been shorts-to-earth) I found no dead (buzzer-triggering) shorts between circuits, which was nice

BUT there were quite a lot of worryingly low values of resistance, about 7 in the 3-400 ohm range and 7 around 100 ohms for the “upper” half of the panel (10X10 matrix minus 4 earths and selfs) and 4 around 700 ohms for the lower half of the panel. (10X10 minus 4 earths and selfs)

I assume this is not normal and that these are partial shorts, say between melted wires, or between tracks behind the instrument panel, but I havn,t done this before so am not certain.

Does this interpretation seem reasonable?

Visual inspection has so far shown no obvious damage, but I havn’t done much dismantling.

Brand: Toyota
Model: Land Cruiser
Year: 1986