OK so here is an interesting story you folks might enjoy. A few weeks weeks ago, I experienced some electrical issues in the vehicle upon a long excursion. The fan had died on my way to work (leading to a rather warm coolant issue). Anyway, two hours later after arrival at work, I just happened to look out into the parking lot and noticed my car’s running lights were on. This is interesting because the car was off, the light switch was off, and I actually have no wires attached to the running lights (just wiring to lo & hi beams). I then discovered that my fan switch was activating the running lights. Hmmmm…I also noticed that my right turn signal wasn’t working.
I suspected I had a cross connection or short located in my console where the wiring for the switches and relays for these devices are located. Because it was a rat’s nest of wires in the console (see before pic) I thought I could kill two birds with one stone and clean up the console area by creating a relay station (after pics) to organize the wires and reduce possibility of cross feed. The effort took about a week and a half, but the relay station looks great, and should work well in its new location.
After reconnecting everything, however, I flicked on the fan and the running lights came on, again, instead of the fan! I also tested the headlights, and the Lo & Hi beams on the right side were nonexistent. I rechecked all wiring and tested all wiring for power and grounding. There was nothing obvious connecting the fan to the headlights.
I do, however, have a common ground bus bar (terminal block) for the grounds on this side of the vehicle (which hosts the fan and headlight’s ground wires). When tested with a test light the negative grounds off the bar appeared to be good. But I wasn’t so sure, since this is the only place these devices now had in common. I decided to temporarily connect the ground wire from the fan directly to the battery. Lo & behold the fan worked. This definitely pointed to a ground issue. I cleaned up the ground point on the chassis where I have this bus bar attached, and reattached the fan wire. Everything now works: Fan, headlights and turn signal!
I could have resolved my initial problem in 5 minutes simply by cleaning up the chassis ground point rather than the week and a half it took. I did however, truly learn something in the process about relays and continuity testing; ALWAYS DOUBLE CHECK THE GROUNDS! Anyway, any new wiring issues in the future should be easier to detect with the new layout.
Next up: Install some hood louvers