Looking for some sound advice:

Just finished installing some upgraded parts - gredddy smic; fluidyne rad, greddy airinx, installed RESpeed Oil pedestal & FC water thermosensor, replaced oil press sender, and also installed 2nd oil press sender and water temp sender.

About 2 weeks ago, just as I was pulling into the office, the stock water temp and oil press gauges went dead. When it was time to drive home, I lost all instrument gauges, warning lights and even odometer. When checking the fuse bank, the Meter Fuse was blown. Replace it and as soon as the car was set to ON, the fuse blew again.

Great, so I have a short on hand. I've been digging thru the schematics searching for shorts but have no luck thus far. I've ohmed out the fan relays, disconnected the cooling fans, removed the alt, disconnected the turbo timer, ohmed out the turn signal switch and the interconnect harness to the turbo timer. So far everything checks good-all 4 relays are normally open and the coils appeared to read 90ohms (except for relay 1 - 75ohms).

Thanks for the help guys!

 

I Had the same problem. I had to tear apart the dash and trace out the wires. It turned out to be a shorted back up lamp switch.

 

were your back up lights always on? I'll have to check it out. Any one else have similar problems with different causes?

 

anybody else has similar experiences?

 

Please bring some light and life back to this thread! Your help would be greatly appreciative in locating the short in the Meter fuse circuit. This is what I've done:

Disconnected ALT, Cooling Fan, H20 thermosensor (wire broke off-damn!), reverse light switch, turbo timer. With all these disconnected, the Meter fuse still blew when the ignition switch is set to ON.

I have also removed the instrument cluster and disconnected all cables on the front side of the fuse box, making some attempt at ohming wires.

This has become quite frustrating and very time consuming. If you've "been there and done that" my attention is all yours. Thanks again in advance for the help!

 

What about the fan relays? They all go through the same damn fuse. Read the electrical manual that lists all the things connected to the "meter" fuse. I just love it, short a gauge and you can overheat your car :-)

 

According to page Z-20 of the Wiring Diagram (which can be downloaded from the FSM's sticky here on the forums https://www.rx7club.com/3rd-generation-specific-1993-2002-16/94-fsms-available-download-449950/ ), the Meter fuse protects the following circuits:


Coolant Fan system (low-power relay side, not high-power fan side)
Instrument Cluster & Warning Lights
Transmission Control (if AT)
Rear Wiper & Washer
Turn & Hazard Warning lights
Rear lights (brakes, reverse lights)
Rear window defroster, cigarette lighter,
Power antenna
ECU
Cruise control system



The Meter fuse only has power when the ignition switch is set to ON.


If the water temp & oil pressure gauges went dead first, I would look at those wires, because they're very close to each other. You might have caused problems when you installed the oil pedestal. Those are both sensor lines, they should never be directly connected to ground, ever. When you say the gauges 'went dead', did the lights turn off or did the gauges read 0?

-s-

 

By gauges went dead = gauges read 0 (ZERO).

Today's Update:
I removed all fuse box connectors and ohmed out each pin on the fuse box to the Meter Fuse pin. All checks good. I ohmed out each wire from each JB connector to the respective system. All relays were removed and individually ohmed (80 ohms across coils). Contacts are open. Cooling fan motor connectors are also disconnected. There appears to be a short from JB-04 pin I to GND.

Now the question is where is the short located?!!!

 

wft does "ohmed out" mean?

 

an Ohm is a unit of electrical resistance, represented by the greek leter omega; ohming out a circuit is a short way to say taking resistance readings usually with a DMM (digital multimeter) or equivalent.

 

I passed all my EE courses with flying colors. I just couldn't quite figure out what the phrase meant. Resistance or continuity or either.. or whatever.

 

after visual inspection of the front harness, i haven't been able to locate the short. any probable points for a short?

 

any spots to check for a chaffed/melted wire on the front harness? Under the driver wheel well, frame rails by nose and around headlights look clean. Aside from digging thru wiring harness, anyone have a time domain reflectometer to use?

 

yet another update:
disconnected the ECU and relevant connectors under the passenger side firewall. short still exists between fan relays (B/Y) and ground. I even removed and disconnected the heater control assembly & center console panel with same results.

I've never had a short kick my a$$ like this! Anyone care to shed some light? There has to be something I'm overlooking.

 

can u send a picture of wat it looks like

 

hey, have u gotten any update?
mine is doing the same thing. Some of the harness wires were open so I fixed them but my meter fuse(15) keeps blowing ever time I turn the key.

 

They haven't logged on to the forum since September 2013. Both these threads you bumped are extremely inactive.

You may have better luck by starting a new thread for your unique issue, but linking/referencing these threads to indicate you searched.

 

Try using a tone generator for wire tracing. You should be able to hook the positive lead(red) to a chassis ground and the other to the fusebox and the wand should transmit a sound when close to the location thet the wire is shorting to ground.

There are aome cheap ones on amazon or some higher end ones at home depot.