gtluke
Well-known member
So yesterday I finally got off my ass and did some upgrades to my galant I've been putting off. I ditched that stupid relay adder thingy that mounts on the battery. DSM's have them too, it's basically all the bullshit that was added to the car after it was designed. On the galant its the power belts, ABS, and main harness fuse. I think there was one more thing, I forget. The only one I needed was the main harness fuse.
So I removed that stupid thing and put in a double maxi-fuse block. One of the main harness fuse (80a) and one spare for the fuel pump rewire I'm about to do. Those following my saga might remember that I've had a supra pump in this car for almost 10 years now, not rewired. As a result of the extra power draw I have melted every connector along the way. The MPI relay connector (twice), the one on the actual fuel pump, and recently the one in the trunk harness. Needless to say it's time to rewire. The new maxi-fuse is my new source of power for when I do it.
So, I do all that, clean up that whole area, turn the car on and nothing works. Trace my steps and realize that inside the old fuse adder there was a power distribution pig-tailed off of it. Hook that up to an aux connector on the maxi-fuse block and we are now good to go.
My wife pulls my car in last night and says my headlights don't work, wtf? Figure I just left the harness unplugged or something since it was in the way. I go out this morning and it's plugged in. There is power at the headlight fuse, power AT the relay switch and everything else in the car work perfectly fine. WTF?
I dig around in my manual trying to figure out what it is. Since the parking lights work I know it's not the switch or wiring. WTF!
Digging through the manual I find that the factory alarm has a relay that switches the coil power to the headlight relay from the acc key position to battery power, so that it can flash the headlights with the key off if someone breaks into the car. Otherwise when you turn the key off my headlights turn off.
I go check that relay and it's not switching. It's broken, not passing power through. swap it out for another of the same relay that's on the firewall and the headlights work.
WTF
COMPLETELY unrelated, my headlights died because of that relay. I may have bumped that relay while working on the car but it has nothing to do with what I was working on.
f***ing red herring...
So I removed that stupid thing and put in a double maxi-fuse block. One of the main harness fuse (80a) and one spare for the fuel pump rewire I'm about to do. Those following my saga might remember that I've had a supra pump in this car for almost 10 years now, not rewired. As a result of the extra power draw I have melted every connector along the way. The MPI relay connector (twice), the one on the actual fuel pump, and recently the one in the trunk harness. Needless to say it's time to rewire. The new maxi-fuse is my new source of power for when I do it.
So, I do all that, clean up that whole area, turn the car on and nothing works. Trace my steps and realize that inside the old fuse adder there was a power distribution pig-tailed off of it. Hook that up to an aux connector on the maxi-fuse block and we are now good to go.
My wife pulls my car in last night and says my headlights don't work, wtf? Figure I just left the harness unplugged or something since it was in the way. I go out this morning and it's plugged in. There is power at the headlight fuse, power AT the relay switch and everything else in the car work perfectly fine. WTF?
I dig around in my manual trying to figure out what it is. Since the parking lights work I know it's not the switch or wiring. WTF!
Digging through the manual I find that the factory alarm has a relay that switches the coil power to the headlight relay from the acc key position to battery power, so that it can flash the headlights with the key off if someone breaks into the car. Otherwise when you turn the key off my headlights turn off.
I go check that relay and it's not switching. It's broken, not passing power through. swap it out for another of the same relay that's on the firewall and the headlights work.
WTF
COMPLETELY unrelated, my headlights died because of that relay. I may have bumped that relay while working on the car but it has nothing to do with what I was working on.
f***ing red herring...