Fuse Keeps Blowing! 25A

[allye 530 3 Cars]

This is really pissing me off now! Getting the point of needing to walk away and calm down!

 

3rd fuse in from the left, wipers, washers, brake lights, radio etc just keeps blowing. I've unplugged radio, all the relays, wipers, both washers, rear demist, taken both brake light bulbs out, unplugged both rad fans and still it blows.

 

It will blow as soon as I turen the ignition on to stage 1, its only started happening since I've taken the engine out this time round, I've not touched the wiring except replacing the fan cowling with slim lines, replacing some crimp connections with solder and heat schrink.

 

Any one got ANY ideas at all?

 

Cheers, Ali

 

Thats only half of them

 

[Anthony 1,003]

With the various items that circuit feeds unplugged, see if you have continuarity (sp?) between the output side of the fuse and ground - if you do, and it's next to no resistance, then you've likely got a short in the wiring somewhere hence blowing the fuse.

 

Obviously you'll need a multimeter for this.

 

Check all around the wiring near where you've been wiring and where it passes through bulkheads and next to things like the engine - it's quite easy to accidentally crush/chaff wiring and leave a bare wire touching the metalwork on the shell/engine (earth).

 

If it's happening as soon as you switch the ignition on, you know that it must be something that has power with ignition on - so you can rule out things like the washer pumps, as they're only live when the stalk is pulled (although it could be the feed to the wiper stalk of course)

 

To help narrow it down, you can unplug various accessory circuits from the fusebox and narrow it down to a handful of wires (or whatever is on the end of those wires). Obviously you'll need to leave the main feed from the shunt box, wiring to/from the ignition barrel and a couple of other key circuits connected regardless.

[allye 530 3 Cars]

As it turns out I manged to crush a couple of wires when putting my steering column back on, so you were basically right Anthony!