"BUBBA ELECTRICAL" Strikes Again
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Le Mans Master
Joined: Jan 2000
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From: New Hill NC
"BUBBA ELECTRICAL" Strikes Again
A customer brings his car by to ask if I can find a long standing electrical draw. Symptoms; electrical draw, no wipers. Sure, no problem, its usually the alternator or the wiper ground wire hooked up wrong. So, he left it with me and said don't leave the battery hooked up. It will go down quickly.
A quick check indicated nearly 3 amps draw. Yep, that would do it. Checked the Alternator, found a bad diode. Great, this is going to be easy. Repaired and rechecked, still 2.5 amp draw. OK, so I checked the starter and sure enough, the black ground wire is on the hot post. Removed and rechecked. Still 2.5 amp draw, so went to isolating the culprit. Wiper motor was fried, so we had to replace it. Great, not too bad. Reattached the ground. Finished. Not quite: Now all of the draw is gone but the fan motor don't work, and it did before. So after a few other checks its off with the shifter console to have a look. Yep bubba has been there too and has been probing wires. You can see his tracks, and there is a wire cut and spliced to two black wires. What the heck is that? The only two black wires in that location are the console grounds. Bubba has hooked them up to the wiper switch. Hmmm, That's interesting. Why would you do that? Then I realized that his ground was hot, so he back fed that through the fan switch to get it to work.
This guy never ceases to amaze me with his ingenuity.
A quick check indicated nearly 3 amps draw. Yep, that would do it. Checked the Alternator, found a bad diode. Great, this is going to be easy. Repaired and rechecked, still 2.5 amp draw. OK, so I checked the starter and sure enough, the black ground wire is on the hot post. Removed and rechecked. Still 2.5 amp draw, so went to isolating the culprit. Wiper motor was fried, so we had to replace it. Great, not too bad. Reattached the ground. Finished. Not quite: Now all of the draw is gone but the fan motor don't work, and it did before. So after a few other checks its off with the shifter console to have a look. Yep bubba has been there too and has been probing wires. You can see his tracks, and there is a wire cut and spliced to two black wires. What the heck is that? The only two black wires in that location are the console grounds. Bubba has hooked them up to the wiper switch. Hmmm, That's interesting. Why would you do that? Then I realized that his ground was hot, so he back fed that through the fan switch to get it to work.
This guy never ceases to amaze me with his ingenuity.
Last edited by wombvette; Feb 28, 2009 at 01:22 AM.
