Fun start to the day this morning. Came out at 6am to drive the X to work, and first the central lock was dead, and then I noticed the interior lights didn’t turn on... shouldn’t really be a concern, so I went to start the engine & it cranked just fine, but didn’t sound at all like it was going to catch, or even try to. No time to investigate so I just drove my C30. Shame, cos it was a perfect day for top off motoring.
I thought bout it all day at work - when I wasn’t worrying about my slacker AP Art students meeting the deadline, that is.
Once I was home, I checked the basics, and found that the fuse box was dead; no live fuses at all. I dropped the column shroud and verified the feeds all switched with the key.
No problem - question though - what are the white wires feeding? - I can’t find them in my fault tracing guide, and they don’t seem to carry load in any key position. They attach to a pair of orange wires and to a red/yellow (or red-white) on the body side of the connector).
Started removing the fuse - relay panel, and noticed the relays clicking on/off as I jockeyed the relay/fuse panel off the support panel. Aha! Looking behind, I could see the large red spade was loose - unfortunately not the female spade at issue- the male connector had separated from the circuit board
after numbering and removing all the harness plugs, I came to this:
Not about to buy a new or used box - I want to drive it tomorrow- so I took it apart:
Resoldered the joint, and then epoxied the socket side base and the circuit side, to help take some of the load off the connector when the box is moved around. Only up to the connector shoulder seen in the first pic.
That fixed all the problems except the interior lights and radio. After a range of circuit testing I realized the fuse wasn’t the “Services” fuse, but the one described as “lighter”. Blast. Turned out the element was shorting in a fairly random fashion - I had noticed the radio & lights out from time to time, but the fuse had never blown immediately before today.