Car-ma, Bad Wiring is the Enemy

Raining like madness last night. Lay in bed for a while watching the lightning show. Drift off to sleep. Wake up early, weather still rainy, go back to sleep. I wake up again, 9:00 and it’s still looks dark outside. I think this is the first day this year that actually feels like winter.There’s a break in the weather, I eat lunch. I take advantage of the weather and go out to work on the last bit holding back the FX. I swap side mirror. Before I quit yesterday, I swapped the washer motor. It was easier than I thought, but I had to track down the gushing of water out the bottom when I tried the washer. That annoying electric valve for the rear washer which is broken in every FX and is really expensive isn’t just broken, the bottom burst when I tried the washer! Anyway, that’s easily bypassed.

I debate what to do & call Sears to find out they do do safety check on Sunday. I go to gas station and get five gallons of gas. I fill the FX and get maybe a bit more than half of it in when it comes gushing back out. Waitaminnit, that means there’s plenty of gas in there! Hmm. I jump start the FX, it still does the wierd bouncing idle. I check the voltage at the battery, it’s really low even with the car running. That’s wierd. I bypass the hack remote battery and restore it to the stock location and jump start again. Voltage still low. Crud, there a problem with the alternator? I thought Allen said it’s a new one, and it looks it. What’s going on? I check the connectors. Hmm, the plug is a little loose, I pull it out and it has a strange extension thing that I haven’t seen on others. I try it without and car won’t even start. I guess without the extension/adapter the contacts don’t reach. The I look at the wire with the eyelet connector. This is not stock. I unhook more of the harness so I can pull that section out for closer look. Hm, there’s a section that looks melted exposing bare wire. That’s not good, esp considering this is a live high current wire. I then unwrap the ball of electrical tape to be greated by this wonderful green oxide crimp. Not looking good. As I peer closer, I suddenly find myself holding the yellow wire in my hand, not connected to anything. The crimp seems to have been holding on with just good intentions, and mr. reality came by with a tug. Now the factory harness actually uses crimps, crimps can work well, but this one…. So now I go look at my spare harness. Unfortunately if I want to swap the wire over, I’ll have to unravel almost the entire harness. Nuts. So I cut the matching connector out and set about connecting it to the new FX. Unfortunately my soldering iron at home doesn’t have the juice to solder these thick wires, and I didn’t bring home the butane iron from work. So I wrap up the exposed wires with electrical tape to help keep the elements out as it probably going to rain more. Sigh, so much for safety check this week. At least hopefully this solves the dieing out and dead battery problems. So close, yet so far. I’ve also discovered the steering rack boots have failed and the transaxle CV seal on one side is leaking. Great, more work. I’ll prob end up swapping the struts too. I measure the drop on these springs, it’s at least 3 inches, a bit too extreme!