Shanasman12

First off let me say that I'm not the one who did this but a victim of stupidity on the previous owners part.

Incident #1: I will start from the beginning. Earlier this morning I got off work and made it home fine with not even so much as a hiccup from the ol VTEC in any way. I then woke up this afternoon to go back in to work. When I turned the key in the ignition the motor started faster than you could say "supercalafragulisticexpaladtuous" (spell check?). In other words it took a long time to get it started. When it did start, however, it ran rough (almost like it was only firing on one cylinder) and immediately died. It did the same thing again and died. I tried a third time with some gas applied. This time it ran rough but ran long enough to start running normally again.

Incident #2: After a couple of hours at work I was leaving in my car to take my break. It started fine this time and ran perfectly all the way home (2 1/2 miles). About 100ft. from my driveway the lights (internal and headlights) flickered, then again, the went out completely leaving me driving in the dark. Then the engine died and I coasted about halfway up my driveway. When I stopped I noticed smoke. My thoughts immediately went to "oh God I blew a motor". I popped the hood and, to my delight, I find it is only a wire that had caught fire (trying to layer this thick with sarcasm. Can you smell it yet?).

Now I'll drop the sarcasm. The cause was a cable that the previous owner had run from the fuse box to the trunk for a system. The dumbass spliced the battery cable that runs from the alternator to the battery, had run an 8in section of wire from there and to the fuse box where the two ends met with only a screw and no fuse. Therefore leaving an open ended cable with power in the trunk.

Now for my question. Could these two incidents have been from the same faulty wiring?

Shanasman12

Shanasman12

Alright, so I opened up the hood and started by unhooking the positive and negative cables first. Positive was fine, negative was had been slightly melted. The wire running from the positive to the fuse box was burnt to a crisp and what wasn't was so brittle that the wires would break apart if you so much as look at it. Fuse box itself was almost to the point of melting but didn't (thank God). I took the wire the previous owner had run to the trunk completely out and unscrewed the ground wire from the trunk too. After that I went to Advance Auto and got some new battery clamps, 10ft. of 10 AUG wire, a replacement ground wire for the partially melted one, and some wire cutters. Chopped off the clamp from the positive cable and replaced it with the new one, cut about 9in. of the 10 AUG wire I bought (I stupidly cut the existing wire from the positive cable thinking it wasn't supposed to be there), and got everything back as it should be. Everything works perfectly to my relief. All that is left to do is locate and replace the fuses for the trunk light, interior light, and the door and seatbelt alarms.

All that is left to do is go have a "talk" with the previous owner about what else he did to the car and maybe a little compensation.

fcm

A power lead with no fuse, your lucky car did not burn to the ground, or batt. exploded.

Yes both issues are most likely related to the shorted lead, a dead short would result in power loss, lights would go out, engine would stall. 94

Shanasman12

While I was digging around the engine bay tracing wires I noticed quite a few wires that were cut and twisted together without even having tape around them. I don't know what this guy was trying to do but I'm about to just step search this cars wiring so make sure he didn't screw something else up.

Shanasman12