Ohmster

I have just purchased a 1995 Honda Civic Del Sol. Never heard of a Del sol before, but the car is original from original owner. 118K miles, good condition, needs tires soon, pain sun burned on roof. Only one dent on upper fender.

The only thing modified on this car is the stereo. The original owner installed a 200 Watt Blaupunkt AM/FM/CD player with an amp in the trunk and a sub woofer in a small box. They picked out all the right parts but did a terrible job on the wiring. Ignition noise was constantly intermittent. I stripped all wires close, soldered the ends, installed tightly, and then seated the woofer and screwed it down tightly. They did use very heavy gauge wires for the amp, works perfectly now.

I have two problems with the electrical system. The first one could be minor.

1.) When the radio is playing and you press in the cigarette lighter, both the radio and lighter go dead, not always but much of the time. Sometimes taking the lighter out will restore the radio, other times you must shut the car off for several minutes, turn it back on, and the radio will work again. The fuse is good and I replaced it anyway with a new 15 amp fuse. Same thing. Radio and lighter are the only two things on this circuit. I could probably track this down with a meter as it is a very short area to concentrate on. Only common wiring between the radio, lighter, and fusebox is where the weak connection could be. Not shorted as the fuse never blows.

2.) The second problem is a bit more difficult. Anything electrical on the steering wheel is dead. No horn, cruise control, or air bag. The SRS light never comes on when you turn the key, at all, ever. The master cruise control light comes on when you depress the dashboard switch but the system does not activate because the buttons to do so are on the steering wheel. No horn, checked the fuse, good, checked the horn circuit, voltage never goes to the horn when the button is pressed. Many people have told me this is a bad clock spring, under the steering wheel and I have found many good sites and forums showing how to take the wheel apart (Safely disarming and removing the air bag first.) and then how to remove and reinstall a clock spring (Or cable reel as Honda calls it.). This is a big job and will cost hundreds of dollars at a shop which I don't have and want to be sure of what it is before buying a clock spring for this car.

Are there any good places where I can get an electrical wiring diagram of this car, like what the plugs are going to the clock spring, showing a pinout of the connector so that I can measure it before tearing the steering wheel apart? I have the Chilton's Manual for the car but it really does not go into such detail and because of the air bag, they tell you to take it to a Honda dealer only.

Any help with identifying the individual wires that need to be checked with a meter would be a big help or any other general tips for these two planned jobs.

Thank you,
Ohmster

MonkeyBoy668

Depending on how long you expect to keep the car, and how much work you intend to do (yourself) to it, a Helms manual could be just the thing you need. It's big, it's not cheap (~$70), but it contains damn near every answer for any question you'll ever have for the car.

I couldn't have done half the maintenance/repair I've done to mine without it, and it's paid for itself 10 times over in terms of labor costs saved.

Ohmster

Well, I intend to keep it as long as it holds up. It is a very nice car, (Never had a removable roof before.) and I would like everything to work. It is Saturday and so I decided to have a closer look at some of these electrical issues. Being an experienced electronic tech, if I could get at the things I need to see, I could check them.

First I disconnected the battery and disarmed the steering wheel SRS air bag with the short plug. Then took off the console cover, removed the cigarette lighter plug to get it off, then the radio cover, expecting to find things to look at. Not much luck under there. I found a paper clip and some debris, the lighter plug was 3 wire; black, red/yellow, and red/black. This wire group went rearward towards the back of the car and not forwards the way I expected. Could find nothing wrong with any of it. There were snippets of wire and insulation under the radio, indicating that some work was done there, but the main radio plug (A big, long one, grey.) did not appear to have any weak spots, tampers, or problems with it. I could have taken out the stereo next but decided to move on and remove the skirt under the steering wheel to give better access to the fuse box and wires underneath.

All appeared original but for a single two wire clear lamp cord with another blue wire that were fastened to the underside with nylon cable ties. One end disappeared behind the radio and the other end disappeared behind the floorboard to the engine compartment. Nothing appeared bad or wrong with them.

All I was looking for was some place where the radio and cigarette lighter shared a common wire or connection for loose connections or wires, or maybe corrosion. I could find none, but could not really see where those wires ran. Cannot see behind the fuse box unless I take it out and how do you do that? No luck on the power outtage for radio with cigarette lighter on at the same time.

Next I took off the steering wheel column skirts, both top and bottom. The clock spring cable was a flat wire that connected under the column behind a very heavy metal bracket, not at all easy to get your fingers into to disconnect or dislodge. I decided to try and remove the air bag by taking out the two T30 bolts. I have a heavy duty screwdriver with replaceable bits and inserted a T30 bit. Holy Christ man, those screws are so tight that I could not them out, the wheel would turn too. I locked the wheel and tried again with all my might. This only resulted in the bit slipping in the screw head, not good, tried again, pressing harder, same thing. The screw was not coming out, not with what tools I had anyway. I see that some mechanics use a T30 tip for their ratchet but I had no such tool. At this point, having made zero progress, I decided to call it a day and put it all back together again.

If this were a 2nd car, I could work on this over a period of days or weeks but I need this car to go to work every day and cannot leave it apart and not working when I do have time for it. Now I know more about what is under there but that nothing is exposed or easy to get at.

Being an electronic technician gives me the knowledge and expertise to work on all kinds of wires and circuits but getting at these circuits in a modern automobile can be a very daunting challenge, it appears.

Honda charged me $16 for a single windshield washer nozzle. This small, black piece of elbow macaroni cannot cost more than $1.99, yet I had to pay $16 just to get one of them. Once I wanted the locks changed on a 2,000 Civic and Honda wanted $600 for the job, some to buy one new lock and the rest in labor to change the code set on the remaining locks. I gave up and bought "The Club". Who in the heck has an extra $600 laying around? A popular and reputable repair shop locally said that if the clock spring were bad and it had to be replaced, it would cost around $300. I know how they operate over there. New building, very nice, all modern with all new equipment, etc., so when you get a quote like that, they START at $300 and your final bill will be more like $478-$600 if you are lucky.

Not sure what to do about this. I do need a horn, air bag is pretty important, and I really could use the cruise control a lot. The tools I have are insufficient to do the job as I found out and a new mechanic tool set would be out of the question. Might have to throw in the towel on this one and start saving up for a shop repair. Darn it.

Is this the book you were talking about? It looks pretty cheap on amazon, see if this is it:
http://www.amazon.com/Honda-Ci...21189

Thanks for your reply, tips, suggestions, or any advice you can give.

MonkeyBoy668

Nope, that's just the Haynes manual. Helm makes their shop manuals with the help of Honda, and are second (IMHO) only to the Honda's site for dealers/service/trainees. If your Sol came with an owners manual, you can check in the back of it - it'll list Helm's phone number as the place to call for manuals.

This is the manual I was referring to. There's also an Electrical Troubleshooting Manual, but to be honest, I haven't had to look inside my ETM for years. (then again all my wiring is stock in it)

WTF?! Why don't UBB url tags work? Oh. They do work, HT just doens't like tinyurl for some god-awful reason. Hope HT doesn't have the same problem as other forums when it comes to processing really long URLs...


Sorry I can't be much more help, sorting through wiring issues is probably my least favorite car-related task... hell, I don't even like to muck around in the dash, just in case I screw something up and have to spend a few painful days figuring out what's wrong.


Modified by MonkeyBoy668 at 9:26 PM 5/12/2007