As some of you know, my ignition fuse was shorting. I traced it to the transmission. When I unplugged the harness from the trans, the problem went away.
So I pulled the pan tonight and checked all the solenoids. They were fine. Checked the harness and it was not grounding (pink wires...the ones that counted). I plugged the harness back in and plugged a new fuse in, then turned the key while the solenoids were all unplugged. No short. So I had my wife watch the fuse while I plugged the solenoids back in one at a time. No blow.
Then I reached in and hit the key to fire up the car. It started right up and I immediately shut it off since the trans pan was still off.
I chaulked it up to a fluke, and decided to put the pan back on. Once it was on and snugged, I hit the key...fuse blows again!!

WTF?

 

helllllllppp

 

Just my 2 cents, but I think you have a bare wire somewhere and you are going to have to hunt it down.

 

possibly//but everything looked great under there when I had it apart a couple hours ago. I am about tempted to super clean the pan and then find a nice plastic coating to seal it all up with lol

 

Yeah, but the wiring for the solenoids snakes around in there to get to the main harness/hookup. So you most likely have a short with those wires running in the fluid but search me how any of them got rubbed or whatever to create a bare wire.
Have you checked the harness all the way up from the tranny to the main loom? Might have a short along there somewhere.
Maybe the VSS might have a short somewhere? Just throwin things out there to check.

 

the 4 solenoids return to the PCM thru the following wires [in that trans plug...]
TCC solenoid tan/black 'T'
3-2 solenoid white 'S'
2-3 solenoid yellow/black 'B'
1-2 solenoid light green 'A'
94 A4 doesnt have the 'PWM' that was in shoebox diagram..
And I just remembered he posted the diagram that should match the above.. oh well... getting late here..

And nothing else is fed from the pink 'hot' wire


If you need where they go into in the PCM [for tracing] post and I'll look...
Maybe one is grounded going up to the PCM?
[ I am not 100% sure, but I would think that's how the PCM controls them.. by grounding them? Since the power feeds the solenoids from the fused source..]

[At least you made a little progress eliminating the coil and ICM leg of that circuit..]

You got a tough one here...

 

Here is a pic. from a 97 transmission. The only difference is that the 94 doesn't have the PWM solenoid, which is the upper right hand solenoid.

http://www.msnusers.com/Richz28/shoe...to&PhotoID=105

 

yeah, looks just like mine except for the lockup solenoid.

I just can't see what could change when the pan goes on...

 

The wires that go up to the pcm will not be the problem, they are after the load (solenoids). If there was a short on one of them the sol. would stay on. Your problem is the power wire from the fuse. If it has a splice then it may not even be your trans. You have two ways to narrow it down. First, if you can find the splice after the fuse, cut each leg after the splice and tie a fused jumper wire into each ckt, with a fuse that is one size smaller than the one in the fuse block. This way, that fuse will blow before the fuse block fuse blows when the wire shorts. Your other way to determine if it is the trans. harness is to back the pink wire out of the trans. connector and tape it off. Find another switched ign. ckt and run a fused wire to where the pink wire came out of at the trans. connector. Now the transmission is on a dedicated circuit. If that fuse blows then replace the internal harness. It may be chaffed to the valve body somewhere. If that fuse doesn't blow and the ign. fuse blows again, see step 1. Good luck.