Another needle in a haystack: Locating wiring problems
Paul Loch from Certified Transmission wrote a very good and detailed article for Transmission Digest in the March 2022 issue entitled “A Needle in a Haystack – Finding and Diagnosing Intermittent Problems.” The vehicle used for this article was a 2013 Ram 3500 6.7L equipped with a 68RFE transmission. Well worth the read. ATSG encountered
Rats! Foiled Again!
We had a 1998 Ford Contour come into the shop with a transmission wiring harness that had been completely chewed up by mice. I mean every wire in this harness had exposed copper running the length of the harness for at least two feet in one spot, and I can recall at least 10 wires shorting out against each other, causing multiple codes and drivability issues. I asked myself why this mouse (or these mice) would choose to feast on this poor, unsuspecting wiring harness?
Even ‘Weird’ Troubleshooting Can Hold Lessons
“Wiring problems,” “shorts” and drains are words that act like a double-edged sword for me. They seem to be the place where otherwise competent technicians tend to draw the line when it comes to problems they enjoy working on. I understand why a lot of techs feel that way after seeing some of the weird problems I’ve encountered.
Simple Wire Problems
Wow, what a treat I was in for. I brought the Buick into the shop later that day to perform the preliminary checks and noticed that the information center flashed AWD DISABLED, and the message remained on through the entire check-out and road test. I instantly agreed with the customer that this was “bothersome,” to say the least, not really even caring whether the all-wheel drive worked. Just this annoying message on the instrument panel was enough to make a person not want to drive the car, a distraction from an otherwise nice drive.
