Did you recently take on (or consider) a loan of 84 months or longer on a car purchase?
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If the symptoms really are a bunch of unrelated circuits at the rear of the vehicle, I'd suspect perhaps a wiring harness or a harness connection on the harness that runs to the back. Without schematics it's kind of hard to guess, but has anyone recently done any major under dash or underhood work that could have disturbed a harness connection? Do you see any corrosion on any harness connections anywhere?
Have you checked all the fuses?
Check all fuses marked ACC and DOME
I have 2001 Nissan Sentra. The Automatic door lock buttons no longer work, nothing happens when you press them, I’ve lost the keyless entry but I would guess it will not work either. At the same time the rear defogger quit working as well.
Checked the fuses under the hood and inside and don’t see any blown ones, although don’t have the cover for the one’s inside so I don’t know what’s what but I checked them all.
I don’t know if this is related but I think this all happened after my battery was dead one morning and had to get a jump, after which I noticed the negative terminal was loose so I tightened it and haven’t had any problems with the battery since.
Any thoughts?
Does anyone know where I can find the fuse-box diagram for my car?
Do the automatic door locks or the defogger have a relay?
-Carefully jump-starting your car caused a surge and fried some of the electronics. Probably the electronic dash display, maybe something else.
-Pulling the battery cable and re-hooking it up might reset everything.
-You still have a bad battery, if this is the battery that was deeply discharged. Although if it lasted thru 2,000 miles????? Anyway, several cars are sensitive to low voltage on the electronic dash display. I would test the battery.
Some systems run power thru other fuses.
Also, check as many fusible links as you can find. More than likely, one is burnt.
The fusible links are distinguishable by the fact that they are fairly thick and the insulation on them is usually spongy. Most often, they are red, orange or brown.
Most locations for them are off the Battery + terminal, at the starter and at the alternator.
Every time you turn the key on the climate control will stay off, then about 10 seconds later, the defroster will turn on, but the controls on the dash do not do anything, the display wont even light up.
It used to be were you could hit the dash a couple of times then the climate control display will turn on, and the blower will turn off, then you can use it like normal. But about a weak ago hitting the dash does not even do it. I have checked all the fuses. I have a really bad wiring diagram for this car, and everything that is supposed to have has power.
If any one has some info it would be greatly appreciated.
The 12V outlet doesn't "spread out" to a lot of areas so to speak, but if you plugged something in that caused a momentary short circuit or a big current draw you could have processor modules have have become confused. It would help to look at the wiring diagram to see what other systems are powered off of that same branch circuit. Be real careful with those 12V outlets, they're an old design and aren't up to the task today.
There's just a chance that a BCM or some other control processor was damaged, but the only way to know for sure would to replace and test to see if the problems go away.
Needless to say now, the guy at the oil change place isn't the one to do electrical repairs.....
So if a 20 Amp fusible link gets a 30 load on it, it will burn through and break the circuit.
As for taking it to the dealer, tell them all the problems and let them sort it out. Make a list of the problems and what happened. Trying to tell them where they should look won't save you any money or time. They will go on the info you provide them and start testing.
But, check a couple things first.
Under the hood, is a fuse panel.
In that fuse panel are some 100A fuses. Should be 2 side by side. Check and see if they are blown.
I suspect one of them are.
A few hours later the temp ggauge shows it is very, EXTREMELY hot, even if I only drove it for only 5 minutes. I take the car to my regular mechanic who says the "jumping it may have damaged the thermostat." He changed radiator, thermostat.
I take the car on a long drive from New York City to Jersey, and about 100 miles the radio pops, then the odometer crackles, and both give a puff of smoke. The car dies with smoke coming from the battery and the under-the-hood fuse box. But NO fuse was tripped.
I take it to a garage, who say "the PCM is gone, you need a new one." When I go to pick up the car, they say it was the alternator which was overcharging, putting out almost 20 volts. They put a new one and a new battery but left the old PCM. I start the car, again, the battery is completely dead. They jump the car with cables, tell me it will reach home. I find the odometer and speedometer are not working, they refuse to repair it. Also the wipers do not work when I turn them to the first setting, but work on the higher speeds.
I get home, able to turn it on and off several times within about 30 minutes each with no problems. The next day, again the battery is completely dead, this time a new battery!
Questions:
1) Why would a battery be completely dead from ONE day to another, with ALL switches off, yet not discharge when turned off earlier? :sick:
2) Why would both the odometer and speedometer be dead in this case? Aren't these a mechanical linkage? :mad:
3) Why didn't the fuses tripped?? :confuse:
It will run fine for a while and then, out of nowhere, the volt meter will drop to about 10 and it is just a matter of time before it will not run.
The next day I may come out and start it up and the volts may be low but then all of the sudden they will jump up to normal - about 14 - and it will run fine for a while... This is the LT - "electrical everything" - doors, windows, seats, remote locks - .
Dealership can't even figure it out.
Other symptoms: rear passenger window works intermittently. rear electric locks work intermittently
HELP Pleaaaaase!
Get yourself a voltmeter, and when you have this problem that is shows 10 volts on your inside meter, put the voltmeter on your battery. If the battery shows 10 volts as well, then you know the battery is bad. However, if the battery shows 14 volts and the inside gauge shows 10 volts, then you are dropping 4 volts in your cables/connectors.
If you are showing a 4 volt drop across the wiring, you can possibly do more analysis depending upon your electrical skills. So in this case you have 14 volts on the battery, but only 10 on the inside gauge. You are trying to find whether the 4 volts is lost across the positive cable, or across the negative cable. So if you meter from the +battery to the engine block and get 10 volts, then you know that the 4 volts is lost in your ground circuit from the engine block back to the battery. Put your meter from engine block to -battery, and you'll see the 4 volts. That would be the cable that has a problem either at the connections or inside the wire itself.
If you do +battery to engine block and it's 14v, with the inside meter 10v, then you would suspect the positive battery cable. Little harder to confirm this without getting zapped, but go down and the solenoid of the starter and meter across the positive cable from the battery to the starter solenoid. If you have a voltage, that's your problem cable. Take great care when working around the starter solenoid. Those cables are sized to deliver a lot of amperage, and also you don't want to apply 12v to the solenoid as it will engage and turn over the starter motor and engine.
This shouldn't be too hard to narrow down. If your dealer didn't find it, it's probably not easily spotted corrosion and could be up under the shield of the wire.
All of your electrical things in the vehicle not working......that's what you would expect if you didn't have enough voltage to properly drive them.
Think of the breaker box in a house. You have the individual circuits each fused at 15 or 20 amps. Collectively in the box, all of them will be fused at a maximum say 200 amps, which is the size that the main wire feeding the breaker panel can handle. This is the main breaker. It's that main breaker in a car which is typically referred to as a fusible link.
I had been out of town, and not able to follow this board closely. I just went back to re-read your symptoms. Can you please send me your electrical diagram to kiawah@carspace.com
I'll take a look and see if I can help figure this one out for you.
And a couple more questions...when you say the vibrating seat is fried....do you know that it doesn't work in some other vehicle, or you know that it just doesn't work in your same vehicle? (not sure I want you to go plug it somewhere else just yet, just trying to get clarity on the facts).
Also, does the vibrating seat indicate the normal current draw? or a wattage number? If not, can you give me the make/model?
Did the fuse for this lighter blow? and if so, was the correct rated fuse in the fuse box for this circuit? (ie, it was supposed to be a 15A, and it had a 20A in it)
-Don't push the cig lighter in again. If it is 'barely warming up', there is still a big problem on this circuit.
-Unfortunately, what probably happened is the massager drew more power than the cig lighter circuit is rated for. It probably had a short in it to do this. For some reason the fuse on the cig lighter did not blow before it started to do some serious damage. Of course, if the massager had a massive dead short, all the damage could have been done in an instant (speaking from experence here).
One thing the overload of power could have done is melt the insulation off the cig lighter wire, and melted into several other wires in the same wire 'bundle'. There could be various wires and circuits now cross connected with melted insulation inside a wiring bundle. Oh, joy! (See comment about prior experience!)
One approach might be to start tracing the cig wire backwards, cutting the bundle wrappings off all the way. This means getting under the dash, and possible even pulling the dash.
I'm not even going to give a wild guess about some computer module or a solid state dash display, etc that might have been overloaded and fried.
My experience was a 1964 auto. A car with a very, very simple wiring setup compared to a modern car. I shorted a wire to an amp guage. It melted insulation in a bundle back to the fuse box inside the car. And then on the other side of the fuse box where the circuit continued under the hood, it melted insulation across the width of the car in a bundle and down to the starter. And I has just rebuilt the bundle under the hood. This all was one big spark, connection was made probably one tenth of a second. And even 35 years ago, working under the dash of a car is not an easy job, laying jammed upside down in the floor of a car.
What did you say this was, a 93 Civic? It might be time to sell this thing to salvage rather than pay to attempt to fix it. Mechanics do not want to start on a search and find expedition of running down what is apparently multiple circuit failures caused by a large power short.
The light on the cruise control button lights up when pressed, but when I push the CC lever down, the cruise control does not turn on.
The mechanic I had taken it to could not find the problem.
Regarding the Recall on the cruise control, I thought I had this taken care of a couple of years ago.
Any suggestions?
Is your mechanic that you took it to the dealer (who should have the schematics and trouble shooting guides), or generic non manufacturer shop? The dealer should be able to find and fix this.
I was worried that it was more than a fuse. I will have the dealer look at it when I go in for the timing belt next month.
it sounds to me like the wrong fuse was installed in the cigarette lighter / accessory circuit to begin with. if it was pulling numerous amps, that should have opened up. i don't think any manufacturer rely's on an in-line fuse (solely) for ACC ckt, but the schematics will show this. probably, they have both a fuseable link and fuse, and the fuse should have gone.
i don't have access to the schematics either but i would say it's possible the alternator or diode assembly on same was damaged, even possibly the battery.
does the alternator and battery check out fine? take to Autozone for free diagnosis.
perhaps there is a power-control module somewhere in the Toyota system. I suspect that second, and third, I imagine the ECU could have been affected.
then again, if it were pulling a good number of amps and the fuse and fusable link didn't go, and you had wire heating... maybe there is an intermittent short in the ACC wiring now to ground.
Your advice sounds scary, but unfortunatley, possibly correct. No, it's not a 93 Civic. It is a beautiful, pristine 2005 Toyota Tundra Crew Cab w/only 17k miles on it. I thought a good place to start was the cigarette lighter wiring. Things seem progressive. The Nav system's auto dim at night no longer works and the screen to the touch gets hot. I'm going to send the wiring diagram to someone else who replied. I think a dealership "troubleshooting" will be massively expensive, and unless they think "out of the box", they won't find it. I won't even drive this anymore. Thanks for telling me not to push the lighter in anymore.
Which electrical diagram would you like? At alldatadiy.com, I downloaded almost everything.
There seems to be a bundle of wires that include the automatic speed control (which barely works) that is near the cigarette lighter...I am kind of lost though.
No, I wouldn't plug that thing into anything else, I had the guy at a car repair shop plug it into a battery meter checking thing, turned the massager on high, and...nothing, no readings. He then hooked a claw like device around the wiring of the massager and nothing...it was completely dead. I would have to get the box, but it was made by Clairol wih a cigerrate lighter attachment as it's only source.
The fuse didn't blow, and it was the correct fuse in the slot (15amp). I was actualy going to take this to a Toyota dealer in Raleigh (5 hrs away), but I'm afraid to drive it and cause more damage. I would be very grateful for you to look at the diagrams you are requesting.
I'm actually in Raleigh, which dealership would you take it to (Leith, Andersen?). Are you at the Outer Banks or something?
I sent you an e-mail with the info you need to get all of the schematics. I talked to the service mgr at Anderson and he agreed that codes don't have to be present for there to be a problem (first one to admit that). Outer Banks, I wish! I am in a podunk town near WV. Maybe you understand the dilema...!
Everything I listed is what is not working now, to my knowlege, everything else is working, so far.
Check your email.
As you drive the car, it uses up power from the battery. The alternator charges the battery back up.
Take your vehicle to an autoparts store (pep boys, autozone, etc), most chains will do a free battery and alternator test.
- your battery connections, make sure no corrosion on either of the two battery terminals, and no corrosion where the other end of the cables connect (engine block, and starter), and make sure they are tight connections
- your main fuselink (usually up near the battery, and big hunk of metal), made to be the master fuse capable of 100Amps or so. Make sure there is no corrosion on those terminals (careful, it's connected directly to the battery).
- I would then check your ignition switch, and ignition relay if there is one. This would be the main 'switched on' power buss that feeds many fused circuits in the vehicle.