Power Accessory Breaker & Rear Window Defrost

bbmyster1

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Hi Gang ,

I'm hoping someone can help me out , I'm new here as well and purchased a 92 Sunbird LE a few months back .

I'm having issues with the 30amp Breaker for the Power Accessories , Power Door Locks / Rear Window Defroster .

I went out to the car one day and started it up and put it into drive and noticed that the door locks didn't engage. I thought it was strange and had previous issues with the actuators not fully engaging and unlocking or locking the rear doors . I figured it was just because the car had been sitting for awhile but decided to check the fuses & breakers anyways . Upon finding out which one controlled the door locks , i went to pull it out and it was Hot Hot Hot to the touch but i managed to get it out . I bought a new one at Napa Auto Parts and installed it , then went to hook back up the negative terminal to the battery and it's sparking like crazy . I decided to unhook the power from the door locks as i Assumed that this was the culprit and it wasn't a big issue if i had to manually lock and unlock them . Upon removal of the breaker i re-hooked the negative cable...no major sparkage , so Once again , i reinstalled the breaker and went back to hook up the battery and voila ! Sparking ! . I have since left the breaker out of it until i can solve this riddle. Do you guys have any suggestions ?. My assumption is that it has something to do with the rear defrost as i have all but eliminated it being the door locks. Hope you can shed some light on this for me or point me in the right direction .

Cheers !! :) & Thank's In Advance !!

Brian.
 
How have you eliminated the door lock circuit not haveing a short to ground?
 
Not yet...I just wanted to get some feedback & i appreciate yours:) as i'm not too familiar with these vehicles. :)
 
Pinched wire in the door is my guess , the wires run real close to the window regulator, so one may have frayed a wire. Either that , the rear defroster is shorted out.

The circut for the locks also runs the dome light, check there also. ( when you put the car in gear , the locks should lock and the dome light goes out.)

Stupid GM engineering. 1992:rolleyes:

I ended up running a new circut and older dome light switches ( door jam) from an 80's car in mine , the switch bosses are still there from 88-91 car body manufactoring , just no hole is drilled. I epoxyed mine in overnight.( metal was too thin to tap)

Doug in P.R. :cool:
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I have removed all 4 door panels and have disconnected all the wiring to the door locks which leads me to believe that it might be the rear defroster....but i could very well be wrong...as mentioned once i had disconnected all 4 door lock wiring, the problem still exists....but i will check the Door wiring as you suggested anhd let you know what i finfd :)...Also , Thank's for the Input on the dome lights ;)

Regards ,

Brian .:)
 
The short I had blew out my dome light fuse , the problem you have is probally defroster related.

I took out my breaker and used it for my cooling fan fuse of sorts. The factory fan control took a dump.:mad:


My locks still lock without it when I put in gear, I just cut the thin wires to the lock switches on the back of the door panels, they had something to do with the dome light. The dome light main wires run down the left A pillar ( under the plastic) orange and white if I remember correctly.

Doug in P.R.:cool:
 
Get a hold of a chilton's manual they have wiring diagrams in them. But I agree sounds like a ground isn't connected or more likely a wire rubbed bare and is touching metal or another wire it shouldn't.

I had a relay pop on mine. Turned out the ground was dirty. This in turn caused the computer to not trip the cooling fan. So I installed a manual circuit by passing the original circuit until I figured it out. It now works.

Electrical is one of those things that you have to hunt for. Sometimes it's obvious and sometimes not.

When working with this type of stuff a digital multimeter is a tool that will save you a lot of time and chasing things around. Test for voltage spikes. I would also check any relays relating to the circuit. It is quite common for a relay to die with it switched to complete the circuit. If this happened it could cause a constant voltage to the door circuit causing it to heat up and pop.

Sparking to the - kind of points to the circuit being overloaded. Usually if a ground goes out or bad then usually the circuit just won't work.

Is a check engine light on in the car. It would be a good idea if there is to jump terminal A and B of the aldl plug in and read the codes. Just turn the key on and count the lights that flash. The first code you will read will flash 1 time pause then 2 times. It will do this 3 times indicating the system is working as a code 12 is just a systems check. You'll know it's done when it comes back around to code 12 again. The terminal letter is written on the side of the aldl plug in. You may have to remove a couple of screws to see them. Hopefully it didn't clear the codes unhooking the battery some cars will do that.

Hope my 2 cents kind of helped.
 
Thank's for the tips & 2 Cents Worth....but being as we have finally Eliminated the penny from our currency here in Canada...it's worth a Whole Nickel !!:p !!!...

Any and all help is Always appreciated...i'm old school and used to working on cars when they were Simple !.. My last car was 79' Lincoln Town Car !...lol....I'll be the first to admit i'm somewhat challenged when it comes to newer cars and diagnosing issues and troubleshooting them, but i do have a digital multimeter....now i just have to find a manual as you suggested.;)

Regards,

Brian.:cool:
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lol I wish I had a 79 lincoln what a fun project that would be. :)

The diagram doug pointed out is no different than you would get with a book so I would follow that one since it's free lol.

The rear defrost diagram he has for the Transport is probably the same one in your car since GM loves to recycle. Once they find something that works they don't change too much between models.

I wish cars wouldn't have gotten so over complicated. My personal opinion a car is meant to be driven not to live in so I find about half the stuff from todays cars to be utterly worthless. Older cars just makes me happy.
 
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