Thread: Help Vitara electricla gremlins?

Originally Posted by timattalon

Apparently that would not have helped me. Thanks all for the suggestions above.

Gremlin has been found and dispatched. During reassembly we managed to catch the wire that goes from the high beam to the spotlight relay behind a sneaky bolt which earthed it. As the headlight switch is after the light technically the switch earths the lights to turn them on- as such the bolt created an earth turning the lights on. It was a lucky catch as it is not in the headlight wiring but the accessory spotlight wiring.....

Car still wont start but that is another story....we are still working out why.

Negative switched - yeah that's a vehicle thing. Most other things run positive switching, so the main current conductor is unimpeded (or so the theory goes). We can argue the whole 'positive attracts, negative repels' argument about which is the correct switching method later... Where it's a bit of a pain is trying to use different manufacturer's products together in terms of accessory and control/switching units that come in negative switching when everything else is positive switched - these are things that have displays or LED indicating lights on them. You either have to split feed the things or rewire one so everything is the same switching system. I used to run into this all the time with boats, especially with the older generation types where the main conductors had been in place for a few years. The negative earth cable was always fizzed up, and the conductor was pinked out and stuffed. Positive switched was usually OK on the switching side, with the corresponding fizz on the negative whereas the negative switched was invariably poosed across the whole unit.

Car won't start - hahahaha have fun with that, you'll probably find a tail light with a loose screw!

Originally Posted by Cordite

Could this be an anti-tamper, anti-theft device? Pull out the indicator assembly and all lights go on at full. Could interfere with someone trying to hot-wire a car in a dark alley. Some cars the indicators won't work if you've just hot wired the car, increasing likelihood of getting pulled over by police.

I am not sure mine has that capability....with the techlevels in the thing, I am surprised that I did not find a carburettor in it....

As a side note, it is working now after a visit to @gonetropo a few months back....However it started working the night before and has not failed yet...maybe it heard I was taking it to someone who was going to go all doctor on its electrics and it decided it did not like that idea.....

Either way the Vitara is back in service so I have listed its temporary replacement for sale (A diamante) ...