hello all, i just sold my 94 z28 to my best friend, this weekend, and i have NEVER had any problems with it. but sure enough, now, he's having problems with it. the car was heating up, so i asked him to check the cooling fans. the fans arent coming on. i then asked him to check the fuse under the hood. it was blown, so we replaced it, with a higher amp fuse (10 amp replaced by 15 amp) and it blew again withing a couple seconds.

any ideas why this fuse would keep blowing? the car had no previous issues, so im totally stumped here.

thanks for the help.

 

When you say fuse under the hood are you talking about the relays?

 

there's a fuse under the hood for the air pump/cooling fans. i dont have the car in front of me nor do i have it anymore, so i cant tell you exactly where it is.

 

i told him to buy a new relay tomorrow morning.

he threw a 25 amp fuse in there and it's holding right now, but i hate to throw money at a problem, i would like to find out why the 10 and 15 amp fuses blew.

any ideas?

 

Your air pump is shorted out and is blowing the fuse. Disconnect the plug on the outboard side of the pump and the problem will go away...you dont have a check engine light though??

 

Its probably the air pump like he said. I thought the air pump was like a 20 amp fuse to begin with? Its been a long time since i had to replace mine. I just yanked the POS out. You should be getting an SES light though.

 

the air pump is physically still on the car however it has not been connected for some time (the wiring harness to the pump was disconnected about 2 years ago). the car is a 1994 and from what ive been reading, 94s will not throw codes for the air pump, the SES light has never been on before.

if the fuse was supposed to be a 20 amp or not, my friend read the inside cover of the fuse/relay box from under the hood, and it said 10 amp. and sure enough, it's been running a 10 amp the whole time, with zero problems until now.

any other ideas?

 

Putting bigger fuses in there is the worst thing you could do. He is really going to be mad when wiring starts to burn up.

 

i am very aware of this, but thanks..... i think?!

fact of the matter is, he needed to drive the car home last night, so in the interest of not leaving my friend stranded, he put a bigger fuse in there and made it home.

now, can we get any actual ideas why it would be doing this please????

 

I'd say you either have a short in the wiring or one of the motors are shot and blowing the fuse.

 

You don't give any information about the car or it's mods. That makes it harder to provide accurate advice.

The FANS/ACTR fuse powers lots of things and any of those things could be causing it to blow. The list differs slightly if it is an automatic or manual.

O2s
EVAP solenoid
EGR solenoid
reverse lockout
skip shift
fan relays

If the fans, themselves, are powered by a fusible link.

My guess is (if the car has headers) a burnt O2 harness wire.

 

Would bad O2's cause me to be running really rich?

 

ok, the car is a 94 z28 automatic with about 143 thousand miles. it does have headers, and exhaust, but the rest of the mods are all suspension. the day i sold him the car, we took it on base and put it up on a lift, we did an oil change, i oiled the filter to his CAI, and we did a little walk around visual inspection. i can tell you for sure though that i checked both O2 sensors, because where the drivers side O2 is on the SLP headers, it falls right by the oil filter. both O2 harnesses are covered with two (2) heat shields (probably overkill but i wanted to play it safe) it has a taylor firesleeve and over that i put the head shield tubing that came from SLP. unless some of the zip ties broke in the 3 days since he's had the car, or some other unforseen tragedy, i can say im 98% sure the O2 wires are protected.

does anyone know what the actual value of the fuse is supposed to be in there? i wouldnt say that i dont trust my friend, but i read one thread on here, where the guy said it was a 20 amp fuse, and my friend said that his fuse/relay cover said 10 amp. the reason i dont know if i believe him or not is because he doesnt know anything about cars, i had to explain to him in severe detail where the cooling fans were and how to LOOK at them. finally he said "ok ok, i think i got it. um... yea it's spinning." i said "IT'S??" "he said "yea it is, it's the one with the belt on it, on the front of the engine right?" after all my explanation, he was looking at the alternator fan.....

it is very hard to trouble shoot something over the phone when the other end has zero car knowledge. thanks for all your help gents.

 

10 amp fuse.

 

super, now any ideas why its blowing? i am going north by where he lives in a couple weeks, and i'll check out the O2 wires, but do you have any other suggestions?