I drove my camaro out on a little trip this last weekend and I had been driving it as my daily driver for the last few months without many problems. My cooling fans never worked under the hood, so I had my fans piggy backed to the orange wire on fuse #6 under the hood and ran the wires inside the cab connected to an on/off switch. The ground to the fan stayed the stock ground. As I pulled into a parking spot, my on/off switch caught on fire. I quickly turned off the car and put out the small fire which was only located on the on/off switch. However, the power wires running from the orange wire to the switch and then to the fan were totally melted. I disconnected the the power wires to the fan and to the orange wire. To check the fan, I tapped a power wire straight from the fan to the positive on the battery just to test the fan, fan worked. However, there was no more power going to fuse 6. Tested with a test light. Neither to the orange or the brown wire. Car started and stayed running, just a little rough. Also, I had no more turn signals, reverse lockout was activated, and my blower motor to the ac/heater didnt work. Still had headlights, brake lights, emergency blinker, and a horn. So I checked fuse 2 inside the cab and the fuse was good, but its also not getting any power to it.

So... I've been looking at wiring schematics. I just have no clue how to test electrical circuits. I see that the brown 541 wires connect to c100 and go to fuse 6 and then the orange wire goes to the ignition switch. So which wire is the positive? Orange or brown? And where exactly is the c100? Read another post stating that there are 5 541s that meet with each other somewhere near the intake manifold, but I couldn't find it. Any advice or solutions or kicks to my butt would be apprechiated and very much needed. Thanks.

 

I would be more inclined to say you might need to check the fusible links. They provide the power to the fuses. I guess you learned your lesson about not running unfused power to a switch inside the car. An incident like you had is a good way to ruin a lot of wiring and cause multiple headaches (especially when you don't know how to troubleshoot electrical problems). There are much safer ways to manually control the fans.

 

thanks for the replay shoebox. had a few questions tho. if there was a problem with the fuseable links, would they still supply power to all the other fuses except the number 6 fuse under the hood and the number 2 fuse in the dash? also, what exactly am i attempting to do with the manually control the fans link? am i splicing an on off switch between the high speed and low speed? not quite understanding what the diagram is telling me to do.

 

Man this is a whole lot of messed up. First of all the #6 fuse while it does say fans, it only powers the relays NOT THE ACTUAL FANS. The fans actually get their power from a fusible link.

2nd why would you run the wires all over the place with power on them instead of just turning on the relays with a ground? Then you only run ground to the switch and then to the relays.

If you don't understand the function of a relay, any of us can explain it to you.

Circuit 541 is a brown wire and it brings 12 volts POSITIVE from fuse 6. The orange wire brings 12 Volts pos to fuse 6 from the key switch and is only hot when the key is on.

If I understand you correctly you tried to power the fan directly from the #6 fuse? I must have that wrong cause the fan pulls WAY more than 10amps. Did you replace #6 with a larger fuse? This would account for why the wires caught fire. Another reason why you need to understand the function of relays.

So if I understand what you are saying, both sides of the fuse holder at location #6 is dead when the key is on. Is that correct?

Well it turns out your orange wire is damaged between the S201 splice and the ignition switch. I know this cause at S201 it splits off to the 20 amp fuse #2 for turn and B/U and it splits to the 25 amp fuse for the HVAC.

If the orange wire were damaged after that split, those 2 would still be working.

It is not likely a fusible link since other functions do work like the ignition and other lights.

So you have to look at the wire from the splice to the ignition switch. My money is on the switch connection. When you over draw one of those, it shows up at the connection first since that gets hot first.

 

I tapped the orange power wire at fuse six because the previous owner jumpered the relays, so the relays didnt work. had someone else look at the circuit for me and he said that the fans weren't getting any power, but that the grounds worked. so we spliced into a power wire that came on with the key on (the orange one).

yes, both sides of fuse 6 are dead. same with fuse 2. brown wire and orange wire are dead. so you're thinking its in the ignition switch? orange wire is what would actually send the power to that particular fuse? i looked under the dash and didnt see anything looking burnt, but i couldnt see up the steering column. how would i test the orange wire at the s201 splice, and any pictures or diagrams of where the s201 splice exactly is and looks like? shoebox's link showed me where the c100 splice was that i wasn't quite sure about. also, if I do have to replace the ignition switch, is it hard to do?

 

Yeah, sorry, not fusible links. I spoke off the top of my head without looking at any schematics. Follow Speedy's info.

 

which connection is the s201 connection? i just pulled my steering column, which wasnt too hard. going to replace the ignition switch and the pigtail no matter what. the pigtail is a little burnt around the red plug and somewhat burnt around the two orange plugs underneath the red plug.

i also removed a birds nest of old alarm system. didnt really work anyways and looked very crudely installed (wasnt me) so i uninstalled it and reconnected wires that were cut and spliced into.

 

ok. got the fuses working again. i replaced the ignition switch. but now the car wont start. not even attempting to crank. is just quiet. no clicks or anything. all accessories work tho. only thing i can think of is i removed the viper alarm system because it was just a ton of messy wiring. i reconnected everything the way its supposed to be tho. mostly just removed alot of splicing. any ideas now?


wanted to add, my pcm has vats disabled, but the battery was disconnected for about 8 hours.

 

The alarm probably had a resistor wired in to bypass the need for the one in the key (that may not be being detected). Programming does not take care of the need for the TDR to be actuated.

 

ok. so i been looking at the relay for the theft deterrent. the one with a yellow wire, a purple wire, a green wire, and a small yellow and black wire. its under and to the right of the glove box. the large yellow wire is supposed to be the 12v wire right? well, its not getting any power at all. no wires there have any kind of power. so i went back to the ignition switch when i read that the yellow wire to it comes from the ignition switch. after testing the old ignition switch, because like hell if im taking the steering column out again by myself, all wires but the yellow one get power. any suggestions or can tell me where the yellow wire gets its power from?

 

http://shbox.com/1/starter_charging_95.jpg

You won't get any power to the TDR unless the switch is in the start position.

If you permanently ground the small yellow/black wire to the TDR, it will operate at start without the need for the TDM to tell it to (therefore, no key pellet input needed). This information is in my PassKey guide on my website.

 

ok. new update. after reading an older post about vats, i found out that the yellow wire on the vats relay is always supposed to be a 12v power wire and comes from the ignition. well, that yellow wire didnt get power at the relay when i turned the switches on and off, so i tested it with a test light using my old ignition switch. after tinkering with the old ignition switch while off the column, i found out that the on/off switch on the ignition switch has to be pressed pretty far forward (with the clutch pushed in) for the yellow wire to get power to it. so once i found that out on the old ignition switch, i tried starting it with the old switch. it started right up. it runs like crap and am hoping its the old ignition switch causing it. however, now ALL my fuses and what not have power. which not having power to my #6 and #2 fuse is why i replaced the ignition switch to begin with. so... am guessing, and hoping that the new ignition switch just needs a little adjusting and will work correctly.


*edit* i got it started with the new ignition switch. it just needed a little adjusting. i mounted it to far towards the firewall. all is good now as far as starting and staying running. runs like crap cold, and still need to work on the fans, but thats another topic. thanks to all those who helped solve this.

ps. i bought resistors for the key reading bypass for vats. my key was the 9.5k ohm key (#14). went to radio shack and bought 2 4.7k ohm 1/2 watt and 1 100 ohm 1/2 watt resistor to make the 9.5k worth of resistance. hope this helps someone on this particular key.