'Nother ATTABOY!
Wilton
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alex Chamberlain" <apchamberl...@gmail.com>
To: "Mercedes Discussion List" <mercedes@okiebenz.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 02, 2013 5:45 PM
Subject: [MBZ] Saturday electrical fun with '87 300D
A few days ago the dashboard illumination on my car quit working. I looked
in the fuse box, saw that a fuse was out (#3, I think it was), and
replaced
it, but it blew again as soon as I turned on the headlights again.
I'm lazy and cheap enough that I would be willing to live without a lit-up
speedometer if fixing it was difficult or expensive, but I noticed that,
according to the handy reference card in the lid of the fuse box, the
right
taillight and license plate lights are on the same circuit. Bad idea to
go
driving around for too long without either of those working. I have a
printed copy of the 124 chassis electrical troubleshooting manual with all
the nice schematics, so I got that out along with a good voltmeter and
prepared to start tracing the circuits looking for shorts to ground that
shouldn't be there. First, though, I had a hunch to look in the
trunk---I've had a lot of trouble with the wires in the door jambs that
connect to the power seat switches, and maybe there was something like
that
in the trunk hinge.
Sure enough, there's a bundle of wires back in the left side of the trunk
in the 124 sedan that connect the body to the trunklid, and the bundle was
suspiciously kinked near the hinge. I cut and loosened the woven covering
on either side of the kink. There's only four wires inside--one for the
light inside the trunklid, one for the license plate lights, and two
grounds. On my car, the insulation on all four at the kinked place was
dry
and crumbly, and had flaked off enough that grounds and hot wires were
obviously able to make contact willy-nilly. On a couple of the wires, the
copper strands inside had also begun to break. I taped everything up as a
temporary fix. Doing it right will require cutting the damaged wire away
and soldering in a short jumper to allow each of the four the same range
of
movement as before when the trunk lid swings up and down--I need to think
for a while how best to approach that, since I'm not excited about lying
on
my back in the trunk trying to solder above my head.
However, my hunch was right, and I didn't need to trace any circuits.
Once
the four damaged wires were insulated from each other, the dash lights
worked fine, as did the tail and license plate lights. I love it when the
easy fix turns out to be the right one!
Alex
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_______________________________________
http://www.okiebenz.com
For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com
To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/
To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to:
http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
