Hi mike,
possible problems
1: Idiot previous owner re-wiring, so that power for the brake lights is
being drawn from the wrong circuit and it just blew the fuse. The wrong fuse
should be blown
2: Short via the brake circuit. The correct fuse should be blown
3: corrosion in connectors on the fuse box or in the harness. Connectors are
prone to corrosion because you usually have three types of metal meeting
(copper in wire, alloy in connector, allow in other connector). The reason i
say fuse box is that the whole car is now dead suggesting an "upstream"
rather than "downstream" fault. A corroded connector can behave starngely
electrically, especially if it gets hot (which they're prone too). This is a
real hazard to your car because the wire overheats at a lower current than
the fuse rated to protect the circuit. In a bizarre parallel universe i just
noticed a corroded connector near my fuse box, and when i came to replace
them the plastic housing was heat damaged. In my case i detected it because
i had an intermittent wiper/tach/indicator fault. when i came to try and
raplace the connector is discovered that the idiot PO had tried to fix it by
clamping the connector onto the fuse-box lug. That took a while to get off
i'll tell you!
Advice
start at the fuse box, check that all connectors that should have power do
have power. turn on the ignition, repeat. turn off ignition (don't want to
risk that there; a nice hot short there). work through the wiring diagram,
you can proabbaly narrow down the location of the fault to one or two points
in the circuit. check connectors and replace as necessary. check through the
brake-light circuit to make sure everything is wired in correctly. if not
figure out why it was changed and trace and fix THAT underlying fault. I
personally wouldn't drive the car until i was certain i had found and fixed
the problem. electrical fires are not fun.
cheers
Joe
___________________________
Dr. Joseph Garner
University of California
Department of Animal Science
One Shields Avenue
Davis
CA 95616
USA
Phone: (530) 752 1253
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Razor [mailto:mrazor@mis.net]
> Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2001 6:20 AM
> To: mgs@autox.team.net
> Subject: Which Wire...
>
>
> New symptom! All came back on line, working fine after it sat for
> about 1/2 hour, started it up and when I depress the brake pedal it
> all dropped off line. Also, while driving it this morning it just
> died, like the ignition was cut off, things are getting really weird.
> THANKS!
> MIKE
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