[jayelsee]

Hey all,

I am not very knowledgeable about cars in general but please bear with me! I am posting for my husband who is computer illiterate. LOL.

It all started with the passenger side headlight and ac blower not working. High beams worked sometimes. Seemed to be a problem with the fuse block under the hood. The one with the big fuses. Relays maybe? If you wiggled it and it sat just right then everything worked.

Took it to mechanic and he rigged up the working headlight to the non-working one somehow. Said it was the little pins inside the fuse block that weren't holding the relay tight enough. Then the other headlight quit. All signs seemed to point to the fuse/relay block. Couldn't find anything to fix or replace that with so we grabbed one at the junk yard and cut all the wires to the fuse block and wired them up to the new block. Worked ok for a couple of days. Ac blower still wouldn't work right. On and off. Then the battery went so we replaced it and then the car could not start at all. Ignition would not turn over at all. Seemed to be the anti theft system. Took it to another mechanic and he got it to start and told us that some wires were burned and he pieced stuff together to get it working. Said it was surely the anti theft system. This doesn't sound right to me but I digress.

Now the windshield wipers, turn signals, brake lights, headlights and ac blower are all out. Read that it might be the ignition switch but I think the whole car (under the hood) needs to be rewired. I am sure this is extremely difficult and costly if we could even find all the things to do it with. Any suggestions? No mechanic will touch it anymore. We live in a small town and don't have many options as far mechanics go anyhow. Guess we could try a dealer but I'm sure the cost would be extremely high.

 

[Submariner409]

Wow !!!!!!! but Welcome Aboard !!!:welcome:

First, go back to your login profile ^^^ up in the black bar and post your car, model, year, miles. It sure helps: All these critters are different. Any advice is most certainly model and year dependent.

Most of these cars have 4 large connectors in the bottom half of the fuse block - you probably didn't need to cut any wires - and splicing wires in these cars is a chancy process.

 

[MoistCabbage]

Yeah, cutting those harnesses was not a good start. Depending on what year the car is, you can pull your diagnostic trouble codes without a scan tool. Read the sticky at the top of the Seville/Eldorado page on pulling codes. If there are any, list them (and their definitions) here.

 

[Ranger]

Wow is right. Not sure I would know where to start after all that jury rigging.

 

[dkozloski]

It's all over for that car except for the sad singin' and the slow walkin'. I couldn't imagine cutting and splicing all the wiring to the fuse block.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Point-to-point wiring being extremely inefficient from a manufacturing point of view, look for connectors and harnesses. If there's not a connector at the fuse block there will be somewhere down the line. Get your cobbled-up harness out of the car onto a table/bench where you can get at it with a soldering iron and shrink tube and carefully redo the connections. Look for miswiring caused by mistaking, for instance, brown with orange stripe for orange with brown stripe. It can be difficult to tell the difference, especially when the wire is a narrower gauge. Reverse the jerry-rigging of the headlights and go from there. That should get you back to the blower motor not working--maybe it's failed. The pins in your "new" fuse block should be good, eh?

 

[johnny kannapo]

You folks should have joined sooner, many here can solve the majority of problems quickly & cheaply.

Solder & seal w/shrink tube for the severed harness. You should no longer use that mechanic. To simply re-crimp new terminals on that circuit at the fuse box is easy to do with few common crimp tools & the correct terminals.

I think the RT & LF headlights have separate load circuits so over loading & blowing a fuse now can be expected.
DISCONNECT THE BATTERY UNTIL SEVERED UNINSULATED CONNECTIONS ARE SEALED.

 

[jayelsee]

Thanks for the warm welcome!

Well he ended up taking it to another mechanic today who got it working somehow. I'd imagine by rigging the wires some more. He did say it was some broken wires. Maybe the ones we had cut and spliced?? LOL.

You all are right about cutting all the wires to the fuse box. BIG mistake. Live and learn, huh?

I found a complete wiring harness at some online auto salvage place. We were thinking about getting it and having someone install it. It's probably not something we could do ourselves, huh? On a scale of 1 to 10, how hard is it?

I don't know if we could solder/shrink tube the existing one well enough to get it going. Some of it is pretty messed up and the existing wires are too short on one side. Could you add in a length of wire? Where would I find some replacement terminals for the fuse box?

I'm kinda with dkozloski. Might be all over for it. We were laughing at that comment. LOL.

Thanks for all the help! Really appreciate it.

 

[MoistCabbage]

Adding/splicing wires is a bad idea. If you can get your hands on a harness, do so, even if you have to pay someone to install it.

 

[Warspite]

A lot of this could have been avoided. Usually, you can solve some of these intermittent electrical connection (connectors, fuses, relays, etc) by first spraying all of the connection points with a good electrical contact cleaner (De-Oxit-D5, or something from Radio Shack). Next, if a fuse or relay has a bit of a 'wiggle" - put a very slight bend in the pin or relay contact "blade" with a needlenose pliers.

My previous vehicle was an Infiniti Q45, and per a similar forum, what I just suggested was a common fix for many problems that were traced to dirty or oxidized connectors and pins. A Caddy is difficult enough to trace out electrical problems, with so many factory harnesses intact. Jury rigging individual wires would be a nightmare to trace the next time such a problem rears its ugly head again.

 

[Mark C]

If you buy a new harness make doubly sure it is from the same year and same model car as yours. Don't let someone tell your that all 98-2004 Sevilles are the same, or 2000-2005 Devilles are the same, they are not.

 

[johnny kannapo]

Replacing harnesses is no treat. I do believe the damage can be reversed & repaired to last. With the electrical complexities in these cars, when a malfunction occurs in most cases is a very simple thing, the problem is locating it. Don't give up too quick.

 

[Mark C]

The engine harness isn't really that bad, its got a connector at the fuse block, one at the firewall, one on top of the transmssion, one athe the EBCM and two at the PCM. Plus about 20 or so individual connectors to various sensors, and half a dozen grounds. Its real easy if the engine is out sitting on the cradle, probably wouldn't take more than a couple of hours. In the car its probably a weekend long job switching between on top of the car, and under it.