Smoke from near alternator

[Aussiemadonmopars]

I had this problem a little while ago on my Barracuda, you know what it was....  It took me a while to find it, but on the back of the alternator where the wire connects to the stud, there is an insulating fibre washer which insulates the crimp lug from the alternator housing. This was missing and was creating a dead short. It's another possibility....

P.S. I'm an electrician by trade and trust me, you can smell when the wires are burning....

[Nacho-RT74]

Bronzy I have posted here about because there is not more than check EVERYTHING, and check for continuity with ground everywhere.

you can get from brushes isolators broken, brush melted and getting shorted with chassis, fiber washers melñted/missed/broken, wire melted by exhaust, wire overheated by a constant power peak, loosen/dirty/rusty field terminals etc... etc... etc...

[69bronzeT5]

you mean that fat black wire that is in the left of the picture is part of that cluster of wires that is all nutted together , something ain't right there. Like Ron said that is the main feed so how can it be capped off? 
Read Ron's post again and make sure that baby is tight and if it is tapping off power with other wires that everything is secure and neatly done.  Isn't that just supposed to go straight to the bulkhead(i'm thinking out loud here)

For some reason after looking at this....I'm wondering which wire is capped off. I'm confused now. I saw a picture of a done alternator. There is 3 wires coming from the wiring harness and into the alternator. Could be wrong but I'm thinking 4 are coming out of my harness. Damn, now I'm confused

[69bronzeT5]

Well, we had no smoking problems anytime this weekend. The valve cover gasket on that side is leaking and sprayed some oil onto the inner fender etc. I'm thinking is it was just oil burning off.

[mikepmcs]

Hope so too.

Still check out that harness and clean it up if needed. 

[69bronzeT5]

Hope so too.

Still check out that harness and clean it up if needed. 

Well I figure so considering there was oil and dirt and stuff on the alternator. The capped off wire is a power wire to something, however, it's not the power wire for the alternator. We tapped it up and it should be fine.