I try to understand electronics, but it is still my weakest point. Any help is greatly appreciated.
2 part question:
1. Replacing a worn through fender well today (from previous owner) and noticed the tires had rubbed into the wiring, melting a small section of wires. What are these wires for: All 3 are green wires that were made together and all the wires are encased in a grey plastic outher plastic coating. One has a thin red stripe, one a thin white stripe and the other a thin black stripe. It looks pretty bad but the car runs perfect so I might not mess with it.

2. Drivers side turn lamp does not work(only the large bulb)nor has it ever worked and the flasher clicks fast. All other lights work perfect. None of the wires for this were rubbed through. Is there a way to test the flasher unit?
BTW..The car does have an aftermarket alarm.

 

I'm sort of with you on this. The harness that's rubbed thru is called the Front Engine harness (F). I recommend you download the wiring diagram, and start digging through it. Based on what I know about it, you'd have to look thru nearly all the pages and look for wires based on color code. So for example, if one of the frayed wires in harness F is a blue wire with black stripe, you'll see it in the diagram as L/B (F). The color codes are on the bottom of page 4, and the wires themselves could be shown almost anywhere in the diagrams. Of course it makes sense to start looking in the diagram with the headlight and turn signal, but it could be any of the sensors / consumers in the front of the engine bay. I don't know of anything in the diagrams that would allow you to jump right into that section of the harness itself and see all the wires listed.

I know it's not a fun task, but that's why I bought a paper copy of all the docs - so I can leave it sitting by the john for those moments when I have time to think.

Dave

 

Fixed the turn signal, it was just a bad ground. The green wires are possibly to the igniter. The car runs fine but it's probably best to fix em JIC.

 

Well a quick check is to remove the cruise (so you can see the igniter clearly) and compare the color of the wires going to the igniter against the rubbed ones.

Dave

 

my car did this when it was lowered to low and it turned out to be my air bag wires

 

which fender well are you referring to?

 

not "messing" with exposed wire conductors isn't in your best interest. You need the ignitor, it may work now, but its not a question of if it fails, (with exposed COPPER wire) it's when it fails.

it will corrode and turn green just like a penny...dirty/wet road enviroments are great at speeding this process up. IF water makes a home out of that nest of a wire bundle and those three wires short together, you will be fixing more than just 3 wires. Since you said, "I try to understand electronics, but it is still my weakest point.", I recommend you don't wait to see if I'm wrong.

Here's what I'd do if it were my car.

1. Inspect any wire that has exposed conductors, IF any conductors are broken replace with two splices and the same gauge wire (I like the splices that have heat shrinkable sleeve for enviromental sealing...use the correct tool to splice or the wire will be worse off than before), IF any conductors have already become discolored, remove and replace...reason, this is engine control [at least you said it was...I didn't check]. It is extremely dangerous to lose engine control during flight.

2. If the conductors are fine, electrical tape will do the job fine. Cover damaged area on each wire with minimum 3 wraps with at least 1/4" overlap. Then wrap entire section of wire harness extending 1" on each side of the damaged area.

3. Rework suspension.

 

if you have eibach springs this is probably your problem. it was with my car, I had to rewrap the wires too. Luckily it was barely through the insulation, I caught it early.

 

Drivers side behind the headlights.



Thanks for the advise. I spliced the 3 wires that were rubbed, put some heat shrink on them and re-wrapped the harness. I also made a metal wrap to go around the outside of that section of harness JIC the tire ever goes through again. As far as re-working suspension goes, I think the previous owner had large wheels on it. Stockers on it now have never touched the fender wells. This might have to be done, we will see once the new 18 volk gt-c's are mounted. Hurricane Katrina has delayed the delivery of my mounting hardware.


Thankfully, I did not experience any drivabilty problems either! Not sure which kind of springs, but there might be some coil overs in the near future.