Electrical gremlins - Any ideas?

[NCC]

As described in the post I put up yesterday ( http://www.pistonheads.com/xforums/topic.asp?h=0&a...), I'm having a bit of a wierd electrical problem with the Tamora.

Does anyone have any ideas of simple stuff I could check prior to resorting to the AA again and potentially losing the car over the Easter weekend?

On nights at the moment so will be this afternoon before I get chance to have a good dig around but any feedback would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Nick

Edited by NCC on Thursday 9th April 00:51

[HisNibsToo]

I did not have all the symptoms you seem to have however I did have the wildly fluctuation dash readings. It turned out to be loose connections on the battery. Might be worth a look. Sorry can’t be more help.

[Oat$y]

90% of all electrical faults will be the earths, always check these first, then the connections.

[chalice]

I too ended up with the AA man and the same dash/electric issues, including the alarm not turning off which was ear splitting after 20 minutes. Check the main earth point for the instrumentation, you'll find it in the passenger footwell, top right. There is a m12 bolt embedded in the fiberglass bulkhead that the earthing bolt passes through. The head of the bolt is in the footwell, under which are all the earthing cables for the alarm, general electrics, engine and dash ECUs. On the other side of the bulkhead, in the battery compartment, the battery earth lead is held in place, on the protruding thread, by a nyloc nut. If the bolt is tightened from inside, this outer connection becomes loose, so you need to check both sides are tight.

Cured lots of spurious electrical faults I was having, everything has worked fine since.

Good luck hope this may help

[NCC]

Thanks for all your help guys but it's not looking too good. Still suspect like most of you that it will something fairly straight forward but it's turned into a recovery job to TrackVRoad. Unfortuantely this isn't going to be until Saturday morning due to a logistical nightmare with the AA (and my working pattern to be fair).

To be honest, recovery is fine with me as I'm not all that confident that any temporary fix the AA could apply would leave me feeling confident enough to drive any distance. Also, if it's recovered, the AA Breakdown Repair cover should kick in and help with any costs (hopefully pay for it completely seeing as it covers up to £500!).

Looks like all those meets and run outs that were planned are well and truely scuppered now . Oh well, at least the dog will be happy as I'll have plenty of time on my hands for extra long walks!

[SEN 18]

Get rid of the three 20 amp fuses and change them for the new type it will nearly allways sort out your electrical problems.