Okay, here's the story. Last night I was troubleshooting a stumble at idle, so I had the car running at normal operating temperature with the hood open. After running it for about 20 minutes, I got in the car and gave the throttle a couple of quick stabs to see if it would stumble. Well the gas pedal hit the floor. I was thinking that the throttle cable came off of the butterfly valve, so I got out and grabbed the cable to check for slack. Well I wound up getting a really nasty 2nd degree burn on my hand when I touched the cable. That F*er was HOT... Hot enough to actually melt through the plastic casing which was why the pedal hit the floor. I wish I had caught that BEFORE I burned my index finger down to the bone. So here's the question. What the hell would cause the cable to get that hot? It's not running anywhere near the exhaust or anything that would get even close to that temperature. The only two circumstances that I can think of are either the traction control servo burnt up and transfered the heat through the cable, which doesn't seem to be the case, or somehow I had current running through the cable and causing it to heat up. Any ideas as to what happened?

Also, what is everyone's opinion on fixing the issue? Do I just buy a cable for a non-ASC car and bypass it, or do I keep it and deal with hunting down the short or replacing the module? Thanks for the replies.

 

Well as it turns out the throttle cable that goes from the ASC servo to the TB is discontinued, so it looks like I have no choice but to bypass the traction control.

 

Anyone know which fuse the TC runs off of? I've been thinking about it and I would think if I had that much current running through the cable, which would be grounded to the block, it would have to blow a fuse... I'll have to go through them all when I get home and figure this thing out.

 

Before you go much further, be certain the engine grounds are clean and tight and everything is grounded properly to the battery negative terminal.

If the engine is not properly grounded, electrical current will find some other way of going where it wants to go, usually through something such as a throttle cable which is not designed to carry the current. Shift cables and linkages are another common victim of excessive electrical current due to bad grounds.