The Fire
Posted on October 26, 2011 by Jesse O'Brien in In the Garage, Uglycar
All good things must come to an end.
I had hoped for more than a week before the good times with my s12 came to an end, though. After a few short days of driving the s12 around every day, I rolled up to a stop light and noticed some smoke puffing out from the cracks around the hood. Just as I decided it was time to pull into the next parking lot, the engine died and I was stuck.
It was HOT out, and I just wasn’t feeling up to pushing the car up a hill at the time. I popped it in gear, released the clutch, and cranked the starter motor over to limp it out of the way. Disappointed and feeling pretty frustrated, I took a look under the hood to see where the problem had begun.
I quickly realized that some wire had shorted out and caught itself and possibly another wire on fire.
Thinking the relay that was all melted together was the source of the problem, I ran across the street and purchased a replacement relay. That didn’t solve anything, and the ECU wasn’t receiving power, so I broke down and did the unthinkable. I called AAA.
Well I’m sorry that it went South so soon for you. What is your next move with this going to be? You think you might have to replace an entire wiring harness?
Well, since this short series of posts is just catching everybody up to the current status, I already know what the next move was from here. I’ll have the full story up this week, but in summary: I found that wiring harnesses are neither interchangeable nor sourceable from junkyards, so I had to break out the test light, multimeter, and soldering iron to fix this one. It’s times like these that being colorblind becomes a serious disability.