Hello all, I seem to have stumbled upon a strange electrical issue, and I'm not sure where to begin to fix it, so I thought I'd throw it up here and see if it looks familiar to anyone.

I was attempting the daytime running lights mod detailed here and once I got everything wired together I turned the key to ACC and got out of my car to admire my handiwork (half sure I had messed everything up... turns out I was right, later...) and to my satisfaction, the lights were on and the headlights were down and it looked great. I was very stoked to get out tomorrow and cruise around with the new running light setup. I got back on the car and just to be on the safe side bumped the starter just to be sure it was still going - after all, I had been messing with the ignition circuit - and the motor sounded great. So I went ahead and cleaned up my mess and put back the interior panels I had had to remove.

This is where things got ugly. Just for a laugh I decided to start her up, and it wouldn't start. Starter motor sounded great, but as far as I could tell the fuel pump wasn't running at all. I even went and opened the back hatch and listened closely, nothing. In case things weren't strange enough, the e-fan was running full blast anytime the key was in acc position, which never happens. As I sat in the car with a sinking feeling I looked around at other symptoms, and discovered that the heater controls were doing nothing, and that the blinkers weren't working. However, the headlight up-down was working fine and the wipers were working. I'm not sure what I tripped off to cause this wide a range of symptoms, but I'd love to hear any ideas.

Possibly related: I also removed the power steering pump today, after having done the power steering delete a few weeks ago. Also, I had the switch cluster apart after succesfully (!) doing the fix for the wiper switch the other day. I've been busy! But the problem with getting into this stuff is sometimes things get screwed up... Thanks for having a look, I'll be trying to sort this out tomorrow after work.

 

pull the headlight fuse and see if the pump works. you did wire in the relay, yes?
you've rechecked all the connections? did you use solder? or did you use quick-splice connections?

 

S4 or S5? Jumpering the fuel check connector and w/key to on the fuel pump should run does it? What does it mean you "bumped" the starter? Does this mean you turned the engine on for a very brief time followed by turning it off? If so, then you might have flooded the engine as these cars are tempermental when you start the car and you don't allow the engine to warm up to operating temperature.

 

Yeah, I did the relay, and yeah I soldered everything. I'm at work but as soon as I get home I'll try doing that. I'm also going to look at a few fuses.

 

I'll try jumpering when I get home, I'm pretty sure it's not flooded only because I have a weird fuel system I'm taking the car into the shop for, and I can only ever get it started by 'bumping' the starter for a second, to get the pump running.

 

Also it's 88 so that would be S4 I believe

 

how well can you solder?

 

Pretty well I think, but I'm definitely a novice. The running lights themselves work exactly the way they're supposed to, it's just everything else that's weird!

 

Blinkers use both the Hazard fuse and Turn fuse.

 

Turns out I had my wiring set up wrong. Aaron had the wire to the relay jumped off the Accessory wire in his writeup, but I made the mistake of cutting the wire and running it through the relay, which I naively thought would work fine. I guess not. I'm assuming the coil in the relay was sufficient load to make everything not work, but someone may have a better understanding than I. After some fiddling, I got everything apart again and figured out how I wanted it to be hooked up, first conceptually and then after about 5 minutes of staring blankly at my tangle of wires, how I wanted it to be done. After thinking a bit I decided to run it off the 'parking light' wire from the headlight switch so I could easily turn it on and off, plus I generally turn that switch on when I'd want running lights anyway. Took me awhile to find the right wire... I have a manual for an 87, turns out the 88 has different headlight wiring, so I had to download the correct wiring diagram before I had it hooked up right (pretty sure for a minute I had it hooked to the "headlight down" switch, which was amusing).

Anyway, definite moment of triump when 1)I managed to make the thing start again and 2)Getting it wired into the switch so it's easy to control AND starts at the same time - imagine that!

Finally, I highly recommend this mod to anyone with a bit of wiring skill, especially if you hook it to the parking light circuit like I did. It looks really good having the lights on with the headlights down.

 

I'm definitely doing this. Reminds me of shuto kousoku trial 4. Sweet fc street racing goodness with some keiichi tsuchiya thrown in

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