>What happened: Yesterday I was continuing with my slow job of replacing the 

>wiring under the dash that the PO was so proud of - he did it all himself!
>Nevermind that all of the connections were simply twisted together - no 
wire
>nuts, no soldering - and no electrical tape
    <snip>
>The wierd thing is that although the ground to the stereo was completely
>fried, I couldn't find anything positive in the area that it could have
>grounded to - the ignition was off, and investigating with a test light
>turned up nothing in the vicinity

In older bugs, the unswitched hot wire from the battery, first goes to
the headlight switch, and then to the ignition. I wonder if this is the
case with your bus?

In my '71 bus, I cooked a wire while fiddling with the radio. In my case,
it was because the fuse box was rattling around loose rather than being
firmly mounted to a bulkhead or whatever. When I pushed at a group of
wires, the fuse box moved enough that one of its contacts, touched metal.

Hope some of this helps-- an electrical fire can ruin your whole day (isn't
20/20 hindsight wonderful?).

Steve Maher   smaher@gi.com thru tomorrow   75461.1717@compuserve.com