Question about car relay wiring (non FOX related

Question about car relay wiring (non FOX related - long post)

July 09, 2011, 04:32:12 PM

I was picking up my wife from work the other day in my '94 Escort and I got about 500ft. down the road and all of a sudden smoke started coming out from under the dash. I quickly turned the motor off and took the battery out. At first thought I was thinking it was the fuse box, recently my tail lamp fuse has been blowing and I couldn't figure out why. I got it back to the house yesterday, and I found 4 burnt wires that connected to a relay, and the 30A fuse labeled ENGINE was blown. The wires got so hot that all the insulation had melted off them about 6 inches up. I replaced the blown fuse and hooked the battery back up and was able to start the car (which I was previously unable to do because of the blown engine fuse).

Tinkering with it a little more, I noticed that my tail lights and all dash/instrument cluster lights stayed on all the time, whether the lights were turned on or off.I narrowed the relay down to being the "lights group" relay. Everything else in the car works as it should, no other fuses blew, no more smoke or wires burning up. I think one of the wires had a bare spot and was rubbing the firewall causing it to ground out.

I traced the wires back as far as I could and they run along a much larger wiring harness that runs up into the dash, meaning I would more than likely have to remove the dash to keep tracing/replace wiring. It only burnt off about 6 inches of insulation (that I could see). The relay has 3 Common terminals and one Normally open terminal, and when I put my meter to the wires they are still carrying 12 volts to the relay. Now my questions are, if the wires are still carrying voltage to the relay than I am presuming the actual wiring itself is still good and the relay is bad? I really don't want to rip the dash apart if I can get away with re-insulating the wires with heat shrink tubing so long as they are not burnt up all the way throughout the dash(the connector itself didn't even melt or even burn). I really could care less about the lights staying on all the time, but safety is my main issue here, I don't want the car to catch fire.