Technical Electrical Fault

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Technical Electrical Fault

matthew.raine

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It would seem my Tempra doesn't like rain - the wipers are on full blast as soon as you turn the key, and the indicator stalk now operates the horn!

Anybody got any ideas about where I should look for moisture ingress?
 
It would seem my Tempra doesn't like rain - the wipers are on full blast as soon as you turn the key, and the indicator stalk now operates the horn!
Anybody got any ideas about where I should look for moisture ingress?

Sounds like the rain has got into the fuse board, or some of the relays, it's happened to me on a Tipo and our Tempra.

Fuse board is up under the dashboard by the drivers door (UK RHS drive car). Water gets into the door pillar from either a leaky sun roof drain or windscreen, I've had both. I gets onto the metalwork behind the dashboard, runs along and drips onto the fuseboard and sometimes onto your feet !. Once in the fuseboard it can drain through it into some of the relays down their pins, affecting usually the door locking, and intermittent control of the wiper, and occasionally some other items electric windows Etc.

Some Topo and Tempra models were fitted a plastic sheet cover over the fuseboard so Fiat knew of the problem. Cure the leak if you can find it, then dry out the fuseboard.

If you are lucky its just the relays, unplug each one in turn and see if the look damp or you can hear water sloshing inside. They can be opened by springing little clips at the base where the pins are, and then dried with a hair dryer.

But water in the relays means it has drained through the fuseboard, so drying them out might not fix the problem, you may need to dry the fuseboard.

Disconnect the battery, some terminals on the fuseboard are live all the time, DO NOT DO THIS LIVE !!!. Flip the fuse board down, clip at the back, remove the bolts holding the hinge pins in place to drop the whole fuseboard.

Make a drawing of which relay goes where for reassembly, label them if you need to. Note where each fuse goes. The connectors are all individual and cannot go into the wrong position. Remove all connectors and relays, remove fuseboard.

The fuseboard can be opened up, there are clips around the edge and plastic "tangs" that you have to spring carefully, don't break them. The fuse board can then be "opened" like a book, its made of layers of flexible printed circuits, don't continually flex it open and shut, the tracks may break. Its ok to open it to dry out and then close it.

Dry out the innards carefully with a hair dryer, or leave it a warm place for a day or two, reassemble, reconnect check everything first then reconnect the battery, you should find that fixes it, it did for me, but do find the leak first. You may need to carefully separate the layers to get the hot air between them. I favoured the warm place method, left mine on the boiler over a weekend. It cannot be dried without opening it up, you need to get into the pcb layers as the water "wicks" into the layers.

If yours does not have a plastic cover, consider fitting one made from something like the thick black plastic damp proof membrane builders use under concrete floors.

Good luck.
 
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Great, cheers for the info. I will have a look tommorow I will let you know if I get anywhere.

Thanks again,

Matthew
 
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I have re-installed the fusebox within a plastic cover. I also applied some contact cleaner to the terminals. Sadly I seem to have lost the power to my CD player, either a result of lasting damage to the PCB's or the wires have been tugged at and pulled out the power lead from the head unit.

Ahhh well, guess you can't have everything!
 
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