help, my car is being attacked by gremlins!

[foley]

My car is going nutty on me.

I put a CD player in it the other day.

Of course, the previous owner had a radio stolen out of it, so the wiring was hacked and repaired. I cleaned it up some, but it still is not perfect.

There is a blue wire that is supposed to be keyed power to the radio. It did not have power coming to it, so I spliced it to the keyed lead going to the cigarette lighter.

I then powered the cigarette lighter (and the radio) with a constant lead fused directly off the battery (14 g wire for 20 amps or so instead of the factory 20 g wire to handle extra accessories.

When I powered everything back up I noticed the following:

My clock in my instrument cluster now has a backlight that comes on with the key. Backlight was dead before the stereo install.

Check engine light is on all the time now. I can’t remember if the check engine light was functioning before the stereo install, but it was not on while the car was running. I think it worked correctly, coming on when the motor was not running but the key was on. I’m just not 100% positive it was working.

Also, the reason the check engine light worries me is that the car used to run like a top, now it has a rolling idle 550 – 600 rpm. It used to idle smoothly at 650 or so rpm.

I suppose I can do a search and find the location of the diagnostic port and whether it is OBD I or OBD II. I’m hoping it’s OBD II since I don’t own an OBD I scan tool any more.

So my question is, what the hell could be causing this? I could have bumped something loose under the hood while I was routing the wire through the firewall from the center console to the battery.

My reason for suspicion is that the backlight in the clock is now working. The only thing I can think of that would be driving that is the blue wire that I re-connected to keyed power, could I have also provided power to something that is now inducing the check engine light and crappy idle?

Thanks for any help.

Mike

[foley]

c'mon... someone???

I'm gonna try for vacuum leaks tomorrow, HOPEFULLY that's it.

Mike

[s13sr20chris]

i thought the blue wire was the dimmer wire? oh well. i dunno.

need to pull those codes bro. you may have shorted something and blown a fuse. sometimes you have multiple systems powered by one fuse. is your wiring reversible? you may want to unplug it and see what happens.

[ricebike]

When I powered everything back up I noticed the following:

My clock in my instrument cluster now has a backlight that comes on with the key. Backlight was dead before the stereo install.

i found out recently that it's normal to have the backlight on all the time w/ the key on/engine running...stereo stolen 3x already

hmm, double check stereo wiring connections; i know not to touch the illumination wire (red/bluestripe or red/yellowstripe) when installing aftermarket stereos/have to run a ground wire to the chassis as well.

blue wire is the accessory wire when u turn key on; mebbe u have mixed up a speaker wire instead? (i did that once when hooking up another stereo for the 2nd time)

http://www.installdr.com is a good site for double-checking wiring

[foley]

well,

I got under the hood and looked at every vacuum line imaginable and didn't find any problems other than a loose clamp on the PCV line, which shouldn't matter since it's in front of the throttle plate and I'm not turbo'd.

I then found my OBDII port and plugged my scan tool in. It wouldn't sinc up.

Then I fired up the car again and everyhting is fine.

BAAAAHHHHHH

damn gremlins! If I see that ****er I'm squirting his *** with the hose!

Oh yeah, I sorted out the blue speaker wire shields from the blue key wire and grounded them, then hooked the key wire (acc key) to the key wire (on key) at the cig lighter.

I capped the two illumination leads as I usually drive with my headlights on during the day, and don't want my stereo dimming out on me when I do.

so basically I have no clue what the problem was, but it seems to have fixed itself

Mike

[ricebike]

[SlidnSideways]

Make sure you check your fuses. Cars can do weird things with blown fuses. My brother and i installed a headunit in his 240 and when we tried to turn on the car the windshield wipers started moving (thats usually not normal). After checking through things once and twice we finally found a blown fuse that had nothing to do with the wipers, we put in a new one, and everything worked as it should have.