Curious Electrical Issue

sholdwick

Member
Joined
Jul 7, 2003
I started digging into why my after market radio loses its memory every time I shut the car off. After some looking I found that I only have power to the orange battery leads under the dash when the car is running, this includes interior lights, cigarette lighter and such. And for the 3 seconds that fuel pump if priming the system when you first roll the key. So it seems that some how the fuel pump relay is feeding these leads. I assume that many of these orange leads to go the the strip up under the dash by the steering collum.... Any thoughts on what kind of creative wiring caused this??
 
Even though the radio has a separate fuse for it, I think the memory for the radio
is wired to the fuse labeled "cig/clock", which is "hot" even with the key off.
 
The orange wires should always be hot. I would look at the backside of the fuse box for any non factory wiring mods. Without looking at a schematic it's hard to tell exactly where to start but the fact that it's not switched, tells me it's getting power from somewhere it shouldn't.
 
looks like page 43 is the place to start...
 

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  • sec08-1 Chassis Service Manual.pdf
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looks like page 43 is the place to start...
Thanx for the info. I found that somebody had taken a Black/Oragne power lead under the hood on the driver side and plugged it into the fuel pump lead that is behind the alternator. So this caused the fuel pump to run all the time. And then to stop that they pulled the CLK/CIG fuse out... I'm not sure where the Black/Orange lead is suppoed to go yet. The car has a vacuum brake conversion on it, so maybe it was running to the powermaster..
 
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