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Electrical whoops

And I state in my defense "It seemed like a good idea at the time......."


So i bought an aftermarket set of fogs (standard set of carquest 50 buck fog lamps) for my x. I direct wired it into the parking lamps wiring (Problem number 1, i should of researched) got it all wired up, was thrilled to see it light up and work. Kept checking fuses for heat and such. No problem. Drove to a friends house a half hr away to show off my job (I thought i was pretty trick at this point, feeling good, proud to have fog lights not controled by my fog relay (Second mistake, my brain shoulda said Dumba** dont f*** with a good design)

Pull into his house, he comes out, shut off truck, auto headlights keep things lit up, we comment about it he thinks its a pretty neat setup. Lights shut off, we bs some more. Dark falls, so i decide its time to aim them, reach in and flick my headlight switch to parking lamps, nothing, no parking lamps, no dash lights, no ding, no back lamps. OK! check fuses, check fuses, check fuses, find a blown 15 amp fuse in the power distro box in slot 11 on the mini fuses. Swap with another fuse, go back to dash (Mind you i have the side fuse panel in dash popped from the great fuse check of 2010) flick the switch to parking lights, the lights are dim. WTF? come back around, look and see from the front, no fogs, dim tail lights, dim license, dim parking lights. Im on the phone with 96 Ford Tough at the time commenting, go back around to my truck to shut the switch off and i see faint wisps of smoke come out of the dash, thru the space between my fuse panel and dash. !!!!*&#*#$(*(*#$@(*#$@!!!! (to name my language), shut lights off, parking lights wont shut off. *#*$((#*@&$(@#!!!!! yanked the auto headlamp plug in the rearview mirror, still on, start panicking, truck still smoking a bit, yanked the #11 fuse again and it shuts off. *HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF* so calm down, light a cig (odd, i want to smoke after my truck does) start checking fuses, find a few blown fuses, (Starting to think maybe i was a total moron at this point), reinsert the #11 fuse with the truck off, all switches off, parking lamps come on and wont shut off *HUH?*. start checking everything, ended up tearing apart lower dashboard, pull headlight switch out, its fine, wires are fine, pull fuse box out, as far as i can see, all the wires in are fine, getting really confused as of this point.


As i sit right now, my baby is sitting at my friends house, im sitting in a Kia Rondo at work (I HATE the killed in action) now trying to google and figure out whats wrong with my truck. Ive discovered it could be anything to a burnt wire, a burnt relay to i may of cooked my PCM *:(:(:(* hoping to find out whats wrong and open to ideas.


Now after doing all this thinking i bit a fat one in the ass.....ive been a total moron and am also open to help, but I also diserve the hazing that may follow. Ill try to keep a stiff upper lip but i feel horrible for breaking my baby (I -LOVE- my x)


......man oh man what to do now......
 
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First of all, take it easy. You are not the first to make a stupid mistake and you aren't going to be the last. At least you are on a forum that can help you.

Here is the time a good voltmeter will help. This is the first step I would do: get rid of the fog light wiring. Now start from the fuse box going forward. Use the voltmeter to check for continuity and voltage. You need to have both. Check the external fuses first, then move to the internal fuses, then to the head light switch itself. If you have a Haynes manual use its wiring diagram to check the wire paths. If everything up till the switch is getting voltage you may have blown the lights. Don't get ahead of yourself and start thinking the worst. Take it one step at a time.

Post back with your results. We are here to help.
 






Hope you find your problem. You say you have a relay hooked up?

The proper way to wire up lights is to connect them to a relay. The power into the relay needs to come straight from the battery. Ground the relay to the body and ground the lights to the body too. Your switch also then goes into the relay. That is how I connected my lights.

For my lights, I also tapped into the wire coming out of the dash main headlight switch going that goes to its relay for the power to my external light's switch. That way my external lights can only turn on when my headlights are on so that it is impossible to leave them on and run down the battery.

Hope you find your problem. You also might want to check that you wired up your relay properly.
 






98 5oh XLT said:
And I state in my defense "It seemed like a good idea at the time......."

I direct wired it into the parking lamps wiring (Problem number 1, i should of researched)

......man oh man what to do now......
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Sh*&^%t happens. You should have used a relay. It would have prevented the overloaded circuit. I agree with MrQ, rip out all the wiring you just put in. After you get your problems figured out, head over to the Performance Lighting Section and do some more research. I recommend starting with this sticky How to: Auxilary/offroad lites

Here is a diagram of how it should have been wired:
AuxLampWiring.gif


Don't worry about this right now. Rip out the wiring and get your issues fixed like MrQ recommended, then wire in your new lights correctly.

Hitchhikingmike said:
You say you have a relay hooked up?
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Mike, no relay - direct wired into parking lights
 






Ok so after getting about 8 hrs of sleep, i head back to my buddies house, start looking at wires again, discover at the headlight switch that the black, white with black stripe, and tan with white stripe decided to become one. Seperate all of them, cut damaged portions out, put in new wire, soldier and crimp and tape up. Go to power distro box, start checking fuses and checking the current using a volt meter, discovered that from battery to power distro box mini fuse #11 is getting 12 volts, all plugs on switch are getting 12 volts, somewhere i think ive got another set of wires mated which is causing a constant because if a relay blows typically it wont supply power.....right?


Dashboard is out and i am doing the great wire trace, i am down to where the three bundles go out the firewall. Any suggestions?


Oh and my parking lights still remain on as long as mini fuse 11 is in. Nothing shuts them off unless i yank the fuse. My dashboard lights go on and the light on chime goes off when the fuse is in.
 


















do you have comp on your insureance? If you do why did you pull any fuses. I would of let it burn and used the insurance check for another explorer. I just would of told the insurance company i dont know what happened. It just started smoking and i didnt know what to do. normaly you get a good size check and can take that to an public auto auction and get a lot newer of explorer or ranger for not that much money. I was to an auction the other day and a 2007 xlt ranger with 9k miles sold for 8 grand. a 2005 explorer with 54k miles sold for 4 grand. The one time i went to the auction they had a 2 year old car sold for $2200 and it was still under warranty for around 8k more miles.
 






Oh yes, let's get the public worried about smoking dashes. Because the owner has no idea, cuz it just started smoking. While we're at it, why not tell him he should sue Ford over it also? It has to be their fault since he has no idea, right?
 






Ok after a long period of thinking pouring over wiring diagrams and everything else, here is eventually what happened.

Ok got lower part of dash removed, center console drivers seat carpeting pulled up, all fuses and relax boxes checked, tested, so on, yada yada, ended up figuring out that somewhere along the line i had another fuseing of wires. Ended up pulling wiring harness apart from the 3 boxes in the firewall and traced from interior up into dash (i had not removed the main dash housing by this point and i realize i may not be using the correct terminology for all this but please bear with me i am very tired) and traced wiring from the firewall in the engine bay, up into the power relay box, and back out to my headlights. Came to conclusion that i would have to remove my dashboard totally down to firewall to finish finding.

Went back to wiring diagrams and discovered that from the power relay box to the switch that the tan/white stripe is 12v hot to headlamp switch, and the white/black stripe from switch to the parking lamp relay under dash is hot, from there it splits into 3 white/black stripe and multiple tan/white stripes with the whites branching back out up into the dash and the tans looping back into other relays (Including my alarm system as i discovered when i removed the relay, quit for the day, and promtly had my alarm repeatedly go off)

Anyways, seeing as the wire from the switch (white/black stripe) to the relay was of thicker gauge than the rest, i took a chance, and clipped the wire at the switch and the relay, ran a new wire straight through, tested all the circuts discovered that everything was working like it should, and have done extensive testing over the past couple weeks and my fix is holding. So what i am figuring is, that my hot from the switch (white/black stripe) fused itself to the tan/white stripe hot, and that was what was causing my parking lamps to stay on. When i go to paint this thing in the next month or two, ill end up pulling everything out to paint it, then i will finish going through the rest of the wiring in behind all those nice little pillars inbehind my dashboard and replace my tan/white stripe hot from my power distributional box to my switch.

Total cost:
new headlamp switch 20 bucks www.rockauto.com
parking lamp relay 3 bucks www.rockauto.com
replacement wire same gauge (Free, had it lying around from a prior project)


Lesson? Dont try this at home. Its a pain in the a** to find the problem especially when you work 7 days a week. Follow instructions and when in doubt, come online and ask.
 






Jason1976 said:
do you have comp on your insureance? If you do why did you pull any fuses. I would of let it burn and used the insurance check for another explorer. I just would of told the insurance company i dont know what happened. It just started smoking and i didnt know what to do. normaly you get a good size check and can take that to an public auto auction and get a lot newer of explorer or ranger for not that much money. I was to an auction the other day and a 2007 xlt ranger with 9k miles sold for 8 grand. a 2005 explorer with 54k miles sold for 4 grand. The one time i went to the auction they had a 2 year old car sold for $2200 and it was still under warranty for around 8k more miles.
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Isnt that considered insurance fraud? Besides, i broke it, i should fix it. If someone hits me, thats when i use the insurance, not to cover my own stupidity.
 






Well done sir! I didn't expect to hear you fix this and I'm glad you did. To anyone who is wondering this is why we always suggest using a relay and a separate wiring harness to power auxiliary lights.
 






I agree! :thumbsup::thumbsup: Nice job on the fix, and ALWAYS use separate wiring, switch, and install a relay with aux lighting.

Glad you got it figured out! :biggthump
 






Thank you both. :) It was nice to finally have her rumble back to life and go back to driving her. While i had everything torn apart i dug up the proper diagrams for my stock fog lamp setup (does ford not believe in keeping things the same? I discovered alot of differences between the years or maybe thats just me) and discovered that somehow (prior to me purchasing it) that the stock lamps were fused wiring wise @ the fog lamp relay (that box is a pain to get to) so i ended up running new wiring for that as well, tested out the replacement foglamps, talked to a few people, wired them into the stock wiring keeping both the fuses (power distro and fuse panel) at 30 amps and they have been working like stock ones for the past almost month. I would of posted sooner, however life caught up to me and i had to focus on that and work before getting online and playing.

According to my family my most repeated quote was however was "My 65 beetle had only a quarter of all these wires, is all this s*** really needed!!!!! Im selling this thing and getting another beetle!" Yes....frustration was rampant. Anyways, deff learned alot about this thing electrical wise.
 






98 5oh XLT said:
According to my family my most repeated quote was however was "My 65 beetle had only a quarter of all these wires, is all this s*** really needed!!!!! Im selling this thing and getting another beetle!" Yes....frustration was rampant. Anyways, deff learned alot about this thing electrical wise.
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Sorry, I had to laugh when I read this. We have all been there, and felt the same way at one time or another! :rolleyes:
 






So you couldn't use your truck for how long!?!?! Yikes! I am glad you got it figured out!
 






ragajungle said:
So you couldn't use your truck for how long!?!?! Yikes! I am glad you got it figured out!
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Well i work 7 days a week and on average i take maybe 1 day off a month. When the issue happened i took 2 days off, worked for 3 weeks, took another 2 days, worked 2 weeks, took 1 but didnt spend any time on it because i was still frustrated and confused as to what wiring was what, then one morning when i got off shift i had the inspiration, called my boss (He is beyond understanding, we have a real good working relationship regarding life and he doesnt complain when i randomly decide short notice to take time off because typically im the last one to ask for time) to take 3 days off, 1st day in tore into it more, 2nd day in did the cutting, so im guessing conservitive here it was a grand total of 50-60 hours tear down, guesswork, fix and re-wrap all the wiring. Overall however i was with out it for month and a half. Bothered me every morning to pull in driving the Kia and see it sitting there with a tarp over the drivers side door because i had all the electrics pulled and couldnt roll up the window, right headlight assem. out all that. Apparently the fit that i threw when the new headlamp switch and relay did not fix the problem was interesting (my 2 year old daughter was repeating all the words much to my embarrasment especially infront of the VERY christian inlaws :eek: ). I originally thought it was a bad switch/relay because the wires had already fused @ headlamp switch and in my experence they dont typically fuse further down the line. Leave it to Loki to prove me wrong. On a brief sidenote, it was down a little longer after i got the lighting fix because 20 minutes after I got her fixed, my alt gauge was reading a little low, and end result was getting towed home. Apparently my alternator had taken a s*** as well. Imagine the fit over that. Then discovering that the alternator was 141 bucks from carquest got me a little annoyed as well, and as i was replacing the alternator i treatened it with death if it decided to break down anymore in the next 2 months. So far *knock on wood* Still doing good however i am hearing the signs of needing new shocks *rolleyes* does it ever end? LOL
 






98 5oh XLT said:
:rolleyes: does it ever end? LOL
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No sir, it does not. Something like you just went through, and fixing it yourself, will keep you coming back. :burnout:

I liken it to golf. It's the good shots that keep you going back. Seems that we only remember the good shots. :wavey:

What you have just accomplished was a good shot man! Therefore, you will go back. :p:

My hat is off to you. After what you fixed, the shocks will be a walk in the park. :smoke:
 






It begins out of necessity. Then we start replacing things because they should have been already. That progresses to improving on things that didn't need to be replaced. Soon after that you find yourself holding a welding torch and thinking, "Well why wouldn't I do a body swap?".

Luckily I'm only on stage two.
 



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