Topic: Fire under my hood

[Rebeltilldeath3]

So I'm driving down the road this morning, sparks start to fly out from under my hood, I lose power, then the smoke comes pouring out.  My battery hold down got loose, got bounced on top of my positive post of the battery.  They melted together pretty good.  What was real nice was this happened 20 feet from my buddies house, so I drifted into his parkin' lot.  He comes home, tries jumping me (my battery still had juice, even though I had a dead short, it was alive).  Nothing happened.  I fiddle with the clamps for a little bit, sit there letting it charge up, nothing.  Come to find the ground from the battery to the fender melted and tore.  I put a connector to join them back together.  Amazingly my battery still had full voltage.  My engine spun over, but didn't fire up.  I check all my fuses, not a single one blown.  Check for spark and I got plenty.  So I'm not getting fuel.  I figred my relay blew out, took it out, put it back in, nothing.  Stuck a wire between the plugs where the fuel relay plugs in, it turned over and ran for about 3 seconds, then died.  Go back under the hood and find that the wiring harness for the fuel pump was completely fried, bear wires everywhere and a couple melted together.  So now I'm happily cutting off all the damned electrical tape the factory wrapped around the wires.  I probably have dead shorts everywhere.

My plan: Get rid of the section of wire burned to nothing, and run a hard hot lead to the fuel pump and throw a switch on my dash for the pump.

Few questions:  Why in the HELL would it fire up for about 3 seconds and cut off like I described?

Is there anyway to get to the harness back at the fuel pump without dropping the tank?  Haynes manual doesn't tell me anything.

[Uncle Jesse]

check the harness to the air flow meter.  there is a switch in the air flow meter that closes once air is flowing, allowing the fuel pump to run.  Otherwise, the pump only runs for a few seconds when you turn the key to on, then won't run anymore until air flow is seen.

[Uncle Jesse]

Oh, and I would recommmend wiring a relay in that circuit you want to run for your pump.  Just make it a standard bosch relay that you can find anywhere instead of that lame circuit opening relay.

Also, you can remove all the bed bolts, unbolt the filler neck, and jack up the side of the bed until you have room to fix your wires/ remove pump.

[Rebeltilldeath3 [OP]]

Well, 8 hours later and I have it running. 

Get this, it burned the wires all the way back to the fuel pump.  It started to melt the plug going into the fuel pump, a few seconds more and I would have been dead.

I had to make an entirely new harness for the charging system, every ground was burned, everywhere.  Switches and relays are blown everywhere.  I can't get any of my lights to stay on, they flicker on and off.  I had to totally reconfigure almost everything.  There are so many jumpers in my fuse/relay panel that it's not even funny. 

I now have a switch to turn my fuel pump and ECU on.  I guess it's kind of cool, I could leave my keys in the truck, but no one would ever figure out how to start it.

[kneedownnate]

I think you inadvertantly came up with the big answer to how to stop the toyota thieves!  Good job    

[79coyotefrg]

You're a prick. I hope your house burns down with your family in it.

After losing a family legacy, almost losing my grandfather, losing hundreds of pictures, trophies, wallies, all inventory, 2 customer cars, all of our equipment/machinery...........getting my tires rotated is the least of my concerns.


Yeah, I'm a tool who can't use tools. Gosh, I must really not deserve those NHRA Best Engineering awards I have then.....

[Rebeltilldeath3 [OP]]

Karma?  Yeah...... lol


Got all the wires organized and hidden away now.  Just have to pick up my relay for the lights tomorrow morning, if it comes in like they said it would.

[WHITE_TRASH]

[79coyotefrg]

Man  that sucks that your stuff burned up but that Karma pregnant dog will get you everytime     that is a good idea to put the fuel pump on a fused switch,  mines had one for years


maybe you could get a new harness