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Hi All,
yesterday I was messing with my headlight relay and finally fixed the problem with a bad contact on the panel side. In doing so I loosened up one of those like 32 pin connectors under the dash. I had no power! It was so odd I thought perhaps my ignition barrel switch setup had had an issue and was not supplying current properly.
I took that assembly apart - and without to much detail, I do not have a ignition switch. many years ago it broke and i replaced it with a spare on/off saab switch. This is wired to a relay, and the power flows through the relay to supply power from 30 to +15 and the other switched power (there's one for the ECU, one for the radio, i forget all).
Anyway, I finally figured out I jiggled that 32 pin connector wrong and so now it's all back to normal except one catch.... the +30 wire was super hot.
So I figured - that's obvious, calvins jerry rigged wires are the problem, and I bypassed it all. I connected 30 up to the other 5 directly and off I went on my merry way to go pickup beer.
Now - this has all been hidden under my switch pack so probably has been a problem for a long time, I just never noticed it.
I noticed, that 30 wire was awfully hot.
At first I thought maybe I wired my radio in wrong recently, and the radio was pulling amps from the switch instead of using it as a on/off trigger. No, no it was not that. And it was dark. so I went to bed.
Today I go out to start mucking with it and the wire won't get hot at all! not even warm.
I hooked up the multimeter, and with power on, +15 was pulling about around an Amp, radio on/off had no effect. Wire was totally cold! what the heck!
Well... finally i figured out turning my light switch from OFF to ON was causing the power to shoot up from around 1amp to 7+ amps. No wonder it's hot!
So I popped pins off the light switch, turns out it was pin 58. Pin 58 feeds relay 17/18 for the parking lights and rear lights.
I thought, huh, that seems a little high but not very high. Each bulb is like 5/10 watts or so and there's 6 of them. I unplugged each of them to just ensure there wasnt any individual one with a short or something causing a large draw. Each one removed individually had a the same impact as the others.
So... then I whip out the bentley and look at the electrical diagrams, which I should have done first.
+15 or +X (idk why theres different designations by year)... mine is two red wires, one larger one smaller crimped together
+15/+X and 30 provide power to the light switch. In off mode, there is no power, in parking mode, 30 feeds power to 58 which powers the parking lamps. in on mode, +15 powers 58 directly, as well as triggering relays for the headlights and so forth.
Thinking either my car has some wiring issue, plus these wires being under normally that much load, causing it to heat up.
I think I will just avoid this entire situation if possible by outfitting an additional relay for feed 16/17 and just use 58 as a trigger for that relay, but it seems kind of absurd.
So... is this normal for this wire to be warm? Why did saab insist on piping so much power through such small lines in the cabin when most of the rest of the electronics are handled by relays ? what am I missing?
Should 58 power the parking lights and the center rear lights, and license light? Does +15 feed directly from the switch or is +15 supposed to be from the ignition relay?
I dunno kinda scratching my head on this one.
posted by 64.121.17...
1
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