Wire eating mice!!
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Scott McLellan
- Posts: 299
- Joined: Sat Nov 23, 2002 7:53 am
Wire eating mice!!
Hey, this isn't a Nissan but maybe since this could apply to any car, you guys might beable to help. The problem is that mice must have gotten under the hood of this toyota camry and chewed threw I'm guessing 30 wires. The main harness that comes thru the firewall took the biggest hit. Maybe in the picture you can see what I'm talking about but what kind of problems could this have since the person tried to start their car and it didn't? Like, I guess what I'm saying is, could it have damaged electronic parts if something shorted or was not in a complete circuit? I haven't checked the fuses yet and there are 3 pairs of wires that are the same color that I'm not sure I have wired correctly but the car turns over and has no spark (assumed b/c I pulled a plug wire and plug and held it against the engine to ground it and it didn't spark). Any tests, theories, or ideas are welcome! Thanks!
Scott go in and check all your fuese. The wiring is gonna be a major issue if you have several wires that are the same color. you may need to extract this entire harness from the car, get somewiring diagrams for this car ,open the entire harness up and start tracing the colors that are the same. What color are the wires that are identical? there is some standard in car wiring harness . like for example on nissans they tend to use like black witha white tracer wire to feed many engine sensors. or black for grounds. toyoyta likely has the same type of set up where they use a common wire color to wire up the engine stuff. give me the year and model of the vehicle and engine size.
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Scott McLellan
- Posts: 299
- Joined: Sat Nov 23, 2002 7:53 am
Thanks a ton for the help with this! It is a 92 Toyota Camry LE w/ the 2.2 16 valve engine. The 3 pairs of wires that I would need help with are, a red going to the throttle postion sensor or something on the throttle body if that's not it compared to a red wire in that same wire bunch that goes to what I think might be a vacuum sensor or something that has only one line going to it. It's mounted to the firewall kind of center. In the big harness that got chewed on, there is a pair of red wires and a pair of brown wires that I'm not completely sure of matching correctly. The thing about the wires is that there are little silver dots on them fairly evenly spaced and I used those to guess which wire goes with the other but on the 2 reds going to the throttle/vaccum I couldn't tell for sure and I'm not 100% sure on the other 2 pairs but I would say 75% sure. I just thought of this, but I wonder if those 2 red wires are the same that go to the other throttle/vaccum in which case it would cut out a variable. I have access to a car of the same model year that I could compare with maybe. Maybe just probe for what kind of voltage those wires are supposed to be sending and then compare except the car isn't starting so don't know. I've got a lot of ideas just from writing this out. Thanks again for the help!
I suspect the reds are the same and supply a voltae to the TPS and the MAP sensor[sensor on the firewall] use a volt meter and test for voltage on those 2 wires with the key on. if they are both 12 or 5 volts with the key on either will work. since neither sensor is a type of sensor the ecm would do a draw check on it likely wont cause any problems if you had them swapped. now the browns I am unsure of. do the 2 sensors your looking at have browns on them?
Before your do any other tests , check all fuses both in the car and under the hood[if there are any] I am going in serch of a diagram for your car. I will post back any findings I get.
Before your do any other tests , check all fuses both in the car and under the hood[if there are any] I am going in serch of a diagram for your car. I will post back any findings I get.
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Scott McLellan
- Posts: 299
- Joined: Sat Nov 23, 2002 7:53 am
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Scott McLellan
- Posts: 299
- Joined: Sat Nov 23, 2002 7:53 am
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Scott McLellan
- Posts: 299
- Joined: Sat Nov 23, 2002 7:53 am
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Scott McLellan
- Posts: 299
- Joined: Sat Nov 23, 2002 7:53 am
Ya I had the wiring all right so that was good. The mouse also ate thru the windshield washer hose (a little cleaner to clean the hose and some electrical tape fixed that) but the scary one was that it chewed a bit off the vaccum line going to the brake booster so effectively making the brakes "not power" I guess. I hope that is the extent of what that dumb mouse chewed up...
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Scott McLellan
- Posts: 299
- Joined: Sat Nov 23, 2002 7:53 am
One more quicky. I soldered all the wiring so the connections aren't going to come apart but I just used electrical tape to insulate them. Once I had taped them all individually, I taped all of them together real tight. Is this going to be okay do you think in the long term? I bought some heat shrink from Oriely's but it didn't shrink small enough to make a tight fit. I used liquid tape on one of the harnesses to b/c it chewed the wires off flush with the connector and I had to solder it inside the connector. This stuff takes forever to dry though and you are supposed to put on like 3 coats. That wouldn't be practical at all for the others. What do you think?
If your solider is smooth[no sharp points] I would be more concerned about the electrical tape over the long hall as the moisture will enter it. getting a smaller heat shrink would have been a safer way to go. they have this electrical tape that is self sealing. it seals off the entire circumfrence[sp?] of the wire and it adhears to itself to make a nice sealed fit. For the life of me I cant remeber the offical name of it. we have adaquit supply at the shop though.