My civic is possessed!

Matt Timion · 08-20-2006, 07:53 PM

We were driving tonight in my civic. I'm trying to drive it as much as possible so that I can get a good MPG reading sometime soon.

Anyway, as I'm waiting at a stop light my dashboard lights cut out and my radio dies. I look at the gauge cluster and see smoke coming up.

I quickly pull over expecting the worst.

Popped the hood... nothing was on fire.

Got back inthe car and drove home.

On the entire drive home, I noticed somethign weird. The gas gauge now read 1/2 full instead of the previous 3/4 full. The coolant temperature gauge was moving relative to my engine speed, and would actually pulse with the vehicle speed sensor.

When I got home I turned off the car. I have a small alarm rigged up to let me know if i left my lights on. It was sounding off, even though my lights were not on. when I removed my foot from the brake the alarm stopped sounding.

It's obvious to me that I have a wiring issue... I'm guessing that a wire burned somewhere and now I have crossed wires, which explains why my guages were measuring the wrong thing.

Does anyone have a suggestion as to where to start? I need these demons out of my car.

SVOboy · 08-20-2006, 07:58 PM

Get a wiring diagram and chase the wiring on the vss and temp gauges. Sounds like it could've happened behind the cluster?

Matt Timion · 08-20-2006, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SVOboy

Get a wiring diagram and chase the wiring on the vss and temp gauges. Sounds like it could've happened behind the cluster?

that's what I'm thinking... considering the smoke came from behind the cluster and only the cluster was acting up, odds are it was something down there.

Then again, my radio started acting up too, but I also think that someone ghetto-rigged my radio to run off of the wrong wire.

SVOboy · 08-20-2006, 08:00 PM

I had a similar thing happen when I burn up the wire on the cluster itself going from the plug to the tach. I have a wire in there all weirdly now and luckily it works.

white90crxhf · 08-20-2006, 08:01 PM

the fire was under the dash! check your fuse box, i suspect you'll fine something melted. they're not demons...they're melted wires!

LincolnW · 08-21-2006, 09:08 AM

I would bet that the problem will be obvious once you start taking things apart. You could have burned up a section of your cluster that fried a bunch of connections together that should have been separate.

In my experience things like this are easy to find once you start taking stuff apart. Especially if you saw smoke, that was most likely a connection getting fried behind your cluster.

Things like this some times happen with cars that have heavily modified wiring (like mine. *crosses fingers*).

Good luck! Make sure to take pictures of what you find!

Matt Timion · 08-21-2006, 09:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 90CivicStandard

I would bet that the problem will be obvious once you start taking things apart. You could have burned up a section of your cluster that fried a bunch of connections together that should have been separate.

In my experience things like this are easy to find once you start taking stuff apart. Especially if you saw smoke, that was most likely a connection getting fried behind your cluster.

Things like this some times happen with cars that have heavily modified wiring (like mine. *crosses fingers*).

Good luck! Make sure to take pictures of what you find!

I'm hoping it's just the cluster and not the entire harness. Considering i have a highly modified harness now I really don't want to get a new harness and redo everything, so I'll most likely just rerun the affected wires.

I'll be trying to figure this out after lunch.

Matt Timion · 08-21-2006, 02:38 PM

I went through the trouble of removing my dash today (I've wanted to learn how to anyway) only to find that the problem is....

in my gauge cluster.

Check it out

Notice anything? How about this:

Now what would cause the cluster to just spontaneously combust like that?