hi folks! The new TR is running pretty good, and wow is it a pleasure to drive. I've been taking out ancient aftermarket wiring and replacing a few of the blown lightbulbs. Doors-closed, ignition off battery drain is 0.21mA. But after replacing the door light on the RH side, with both doors open, I went to turn the battery switch back on, and fuse #2 (15A) blows immediately (car has the Dave Helms/SR fuse panel). I then disassemble replaced light, all looks OK, put back together, turn power on, works ok, no fuse blows, I figure it was some kind of weird short I created, but after reassembly is ok now. But then, while replacing the LH door curb light (forgot to turn battery off), after power on and doors open for about 10 minutes, (and no contact between light contacts and frame), the same fuse blows again spontaneously. OK, so I finish the bulb replacement, put everything back together, everything is working fine. Go for a long drive, everything is working fine, fuse not blown. I'm pretty new to these kind of electrical systems - I was going to start disassembling the doors/dash to trace all the wiring to look for broken/melted wires/old t-taps/etc, but just didn't know if there was some kind of easier/faster way to isolate the (possible) electrical fault, or if anyone has any suggestions?
I've torn down my entire electrical system looking for a short. I mean TORE it down and traced every inch of every wire in a circuit without finding the short. This sounds like the same circuit I was working on. It did include door lights. Marker lights, dash lights and so on. Your fuse probably only blows when you have the lights on. So here's a million dollar piece of advice for you. Open your engine bay cover and take a look at the lift struts. You'll notice that there are wires connected to the top and bottom of these struts. This is one of the many bone-head-lame-ass designs that have really P.O'd me with this car. Look carefully at the right side strut. Watch its position as you close the hood. There will be a close contact between the hood and the body of that strut. If they contact, it will short out and blow that fuse. My fix was simply to wrap the body in electrical tape. There are other solutions. Let me know what you find. If I'm right, you can start making payments
Yes, if this is the same circuit as your dash lights, check that passenger side rear bonnet strut. Over time it wiggles and shorts out to the rear bonnet (I learned that here, thanks guys!) I put a piece of electrical tape on it as well as a stop gap and I never had the problem since.
awesome! Thanks Scott and Joe. That's the same circuit. Will check it out tomorrow and will let you know how it goes! p.s. while I will definitely wrap them in tape regardless of their current status (I'm assuming unwrapped), I just discovered liquid electrical tape - for repairing old t-tap connections. How did I never know this existed? amazing stuff.
These continous electrical Gremlins drove me mad .... occurred too often in my 512TR .... Good luck !
Looks like a very thorough tool. But this intermittent short will make you want to tear your whole car apart. Which I did and still didn't find it. The only way I could reproduce it was. lights on, left turn, hit a bump. The bump would lift the bonnet just enough and the left turn would push the bonnet to the right just enough. POP! Stupid design. Run power through a lift strut. What moron thought of that?
scott after I did all my modification on my competition with new injection and ignition I had the problem, that always this fuse burns. so I dismanteled nearly the whole cabletree form the dashboard to the right rear light and finally I found, that the lift strut had connection to ground. so it took me about 24 hours to find this mistake. terrible idea what they did ! ! !
There are some videos on how to use it, it will help find intermittent shorts as well. On one of my commercial trucks a Dealer wanted to charge me over $1000 to rewire a switch for the PTO I used this tool and simply switched a wire to ground with it and found the problem took me 5 minutes I had my truck there all day they still couldnt figure it out and this was an authorized Allison repair shop.
Power Probe PP401AS PP4 IV 9 Mode Diagonstic Circuit Tester Tool | eBay Power Probe ECT2000 Wireless Short Finder Kit New | eBay These are the 2 tools I used
Wow - thanks for the links Jeff! I took a look at the rear bonnet struts and one of the POs had already bypassed them. I think it's back to the drawing board, but I'll pick up one of those short finders and be well-armed when I go back to look for it. There's still some mystery going on as the glove box lights, rear bonnet lights and front fuse box light don't work (and aren't burnt out), so I'm going to have to track down those as well. But while tracing wires last night I found that a PO had removed a stereo amp and just left a wire with an unprotected spade terminal dangling in the front of the car connected at its other end to the positive battery terminal. I assume it wasn't an intentional booby trap to burn the car down, but I sure am glad that I found it. I think I've successfully pulled out about 98% of the aftermarket wiring but there's still a few disconnected 'mystery wires' that are definitely not original lying around that I have to trace into doors and through the dash. Will update the thread if/when I find the mystery short.
Only 24 hours? Took me 2 years. When I first saw this idea I thought it was kind of cool. Now I think it's really stupid. Would have been ok if they used it for ground and not hot. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk
first I thaught the same, good idea, but after I was thinking more about this I must say: stupid thinking also it would not be good for ground, because sometimes it would work and sometimes not
