Date:         Fri, 12 Mar 2004 00:30:44 -0600
Reply-To:     Paul & Becky Oliver <oliver8@TDS.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Paul & Becky Oliver <oliver8@TDS.NET>
Subject:      Intermittent Electric Fault
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Over the past few months I have had an intermittent electric fault. The vehicle would not keep running or start. After a "cooling off" it would start and run fine, until it did it again. Almost like a heat sink that would reset itself. 

Other strange things started to happen too. The horn would blow while the engine was being "cranked" over during the starting process but would not work with the engine running or when the engine was off, whether the "key" was on or off. I noticed that the headlights would dim a little when on high and I turned  both heater fans to high.

Well my boys "had" to use it, to tow home a used car and it quit on them. They ended up towing the vanagon home with the used car, (I know, makes you want to cry) a ford fiesta. And of course they were going to be over to help fix it, yea...they never showed up. 

So, with the help of one of my daughters (all 5 of them blonds, some more than others), who was able to follow my instructions, using my volt meter to ascertain that the voltage at the ignition was only 7 volts and nothing at the fuse box, but 12 volts at the alternator, which she found on her own (wife didn't think she would).

With this information, the first place to look was the connection at fuse box and sure enough a "jumper" wire was burned off and had melted into a few other wires. 

Has anyone else had this happen? I only ask because I have another vanagon and when I went to rob parts, I found it too had a melted wire at the same connection but not yet burned apart or into other wires. 

When you add up all the watts that have to go through this jumper, to power the other half of the fuse box, it's to small a gauge. I'm surprised that the main feed hasn't melted. The best thing to keep it from ever happening again is to split the power source going to the fuse box, by adding another feed the same size as the original, thus doing away with the jumper wire that melted. 

Since being disabled it's a real challenge to keep things fixed but the girls are getting a good education.

Paul