Click...Clickclickclickclick electrical woes *SOLVED*

scottzg · Post by **scottzg** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 12:53 am

turn the key to start the car and thats the sound you get. The hazards and the blinkers are all messed up too, they wont blink regularly. Everything else works fine though, radio, brake lights, hvac, etc. Any ideas?

vrg3 · Post by **vrg3** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 1:06 am

Maybe your flasher unit is on the fritz? Is the clicking noise coming from it?

The flasher unit is mounted kind of between the center console and the glove box. If you want to listen more closely to it you can take out the glove box and the metal frame around it; you should then be able to see it above the illumination control unit.

Hey, how did you ever fix that big short circuit problem you had? Has this problem existed ever since then?

scottzg · Post by **scottzg** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 1:22 am

yea, the short circuit problem was gone... for a while. the car wont start, and these are the symptoms.

vrg3 · Post by **vrg3** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 1:27 am

How did you temporarily fix the problem before?

Where does the clicking sound like it's coming from?

scottzg · Post by **scottzg** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 1:32 am

i fixed the problem before by replacing all my main wires connected to the battery. The positive ones were fried. The symptoms are different now though...

I've already gone through all my radio-related wires. I shrinkwrapped them already, so i doubt the problem stems from there, as it did before.

it make no sound in the acc mode, and everything works fine. Then you click it over to start and it makes a hyperactive click-- as the title says, then it settles into a nice slower click when you stop trying to start it.

vrg3 · Post by **vrg3** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 1:59 am

You may have a fried blinker unit... I don't think that would keep the car from starting, though... You could unplug it to see what happens.

Electrical shorts are the worst. You never know what random wires in your car might have had their insulation singed off or worse.

So you replaced the wire going to the starter from the battery? Can you verify that the starter has 12 volts across that terminal and ground at all times?

If so, next thing to check is that the small red-with-yellow-stripe wire going to the starter has +12v on it when you try to crank the engine. If it does, then there's a problem with the starter and/or starter solenoid. If it doesn't, then we have to look at the clutch switch and the relay it operates.

Post by **Legacy777** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 2:30 am

where is the clicking noise coming from? Dash, engine bay?

how loud is it?

scottzg · Post by **scottzg** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 2:55 am

Have you ever seen a battery discharge in a half hour? I just did. I have a short somewhere, and it's huge.

vrg3 · Post by **vrg3** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 3:01 am

Ah, so it's probably not starting just because your battery's out of juice.

Usually when people have problems with their battery draining, I suggest unhooking the negative battery terminal and putting an ammeter in between the battery post and the terminal. If you read more than about a hundred milliamps there's probably too much parasitic load from some circuit. You can then just go pulling out fuses from the fuse boxes until the current drops back down to an acceptable level, and then follow the circuits on that fuse.

In your case it may be hard to find an ammeter capable of handling the current. It would probably take a good 10 or 15 amperes to drain the battery in half an hour.

An alternative is to take a small piece of stainless steel or something else with a small but not-insignificant resistance and put that in series with the battery, and then just use a voltmeter to measure the voltage across it. Ohm's Law says V=IR, so you can infer the current.

In the meantime, you should probably get/borrow a good battery charger so you can trickle charge the battery.

scottzg · Post by **scottzg** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 3:13 am

I have a trickle charger, and i had charged the battery already, i already figured that part out. I figured i had discharged it from cranking, but such was not the case.

I had infered that was the plan with the circuits, im not particularly looking forward to it.

Here's a potential problem: 2 years ago, when i installed my stereo, i never found the ACC wire. I hooked a switch up to my blank spot next to the ignition and have loved it. What if that is the problem wire though? I sure cant find it. It makes sense because it's bare. Sigh...

VRG, you are incredibly awesome.

Post by **Legacy777** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 2:07 pm

Scott,

Not to get on your case about your wiring too much, but I have seen this time and time again with friends wiring up their stereo improperly and half assly.

It will "work" for the time being, but later down the line something ends up getting fried or screwed up because the wiring is not done right.

If you do it right, it will work right, and work that way for a long time. I've had my stereo setup in my car for a good 7-8 years now. I have had no wiring issues to speak of, and since everything was done properly, any bonehead stuff I've pulled like shorting out the power wire was fine because fuses were in their proper places.

vrg3 · Post by **vrg3** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 3:00 pm

Yeah, I have to agree with Josh... the potential costs of doing an improper wiring job are huge. When one wire overheats due to overcurrent it can melt the insulation of wires near it, causing new shorts, and ... well, it's bad. I know one guy who had to get a whole new wiring harness for his entire Jeep Cherokee cuz a shop messed up some wiring. That was expensive.

Scott, do you have an ammeter you could use for the circuits?

I thought of another way you could do it. You could pull all your fuses out. Then get a 1 amp fuse and wire it directly between your negative battery post and the negative battery terminal. Then, put the fuses back into the fusebox one by one until you pop that 1A fuse.

What do you mean by "bare?" You're not telling us the wire isn't insulated, are you!?!? Where does that wire go to get power?

If you need more info on the stereo wiring, look here:

http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~v/bcstereo/

VRG, you are incredibly awesome.

Hehe... Thanks. Just trying to help.

scottzg · Post by **scottzg** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 7:26 pm

my wiring was just fine...until some asshole decided to rip off my old stereo. My new wiring is just fine too, I have some electrical ability (i can assemble circuit boards and whatnot) My stereo wiring is shrink tubed and zip tied. I know what im doing.

Trouble is, i had a rogue wire i didnt find when i replaced my stereo after the old one got ripped off. I found that, after frying my positive terminal wires, which i replaced. Car was fine for 3 weeks. Now this.

Bare means it was stripped and hanging in the back. Special thanks to the people i gave my radio to. Don't know if it was powered or not, i could never get power out of it...

Good idea vrg... I'll prolly do that.

scottzg · Post by **scottzg** » Sat Oct 18, 2003 5:05 am

what color are the 1 and 2 wires on the power distribution side of the radio?

Where do they trace back to? I believe they are the culprits, if i could remove them, since im not using them, id eliminate one variable.

My radio fuse blew at some point since my radio was stolen, although it didn't change anything since neither my stereo nor my car depend on it. i didn't use those wires to install my stereo.

vrg3 · Post by **vrg3** » Sat Oct 18, 2003 6:27 am

Josh scanned in the radio wiring diagram:

http://www.main.experiencetherave.com:8 ... iodiag.jpg

It has wire colors on it except for the illumination wires. I can look those up if you need it.

scottzg · Post by **scottzg** » Sun Oct 19, 2003 4:15 am

the loose radio wire was found, and it had shorted out the starter wire.
I just left the radio fuse out for eternity, i don't use that circuit anyway.

I hate electrical problems.

vrg3 · Post by **vrg3** » Sun Oct 19, 2003 4:19 am

scottzg wrote:the loose radio wire was found, and it had shorted out the starter wire.
I just left the radio fuse out for eternity, i don't use that circuit anyway.

So is the problem fixed?

I hate electrical problems.

I dunno... There are some things to appreciate about them. You rarely need a breaker bar and lots of upper body strength to resolve electrical problems. :)

scottzg · Post by **scottzg** » Sun Oct 19, 2003 7:35 am

Yep, totally fixed.

I dunno... There are some things to appreciate about them. You rarely need a breaker bar and lots of upper body strength to resolve electrical problems

True, but I have a breaker bar and lots of upper body strength. When it's something like that, you don't have to worry about destroying EVERYTHING the car depends on to run.

When you rip a anti sway bar in half, everyone thinks youre cool. When you have a radio-related electrical issue, everyone thinks you're an idiot.

vrg3 · Post by **vrg3** » Mon Oct 20, 2003 5:21 am

scottzg wrote:Yep, totally fixed.

Awesome! At times I was worried you'd never solve the problem. Consider yourself lucky. :)

True, but I have a breaker bar and lots of upper body strength. When it's something like that, you don't have to worry about destroying EVERYTHING the car depends on to run.

But you must admit that if you do all your wiring right you rarely have problems. The problem is that a lot of people think they know how to do electrical work when they really don't.

In your case you were the victim of vandalism, though... vandals typically aren't careful to keep your wiring safe.

With mechanical stuff, even if you do everything right sometimes you just can't get a big enough wrench in there, and the parts are all rusted together, and threads get stripped, and...

I don't want to sound like I'm saying I prefer electrical problems... mechanical ones are usually much easier to fix because dependencies are easier to identify.

When you rip a anti sway bar in half, everyone thinks youre cool. When you have a radio-related electrical issue, everyone thinks you're an idiot. :?

Heh, you're right about that. I show people the 19mm socket I sheared when I forgot about "lefty loosey" while doing the struts on my 97 Legacy GT and people are impressed. But I was an idiot!

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Click...Clickclickclickclick electrical woes SOLVED

Click...Clickclickclickclick electrical woes SOLVED