2000 civic si, melting fog light wires?
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Forum Name: General Discussion
Forum Discription: General Mobile Electronics Questions and Answers
URL: https://www.the12volt.com/installbay/forum_posts.asp?tid=25294
Printed Date: September 15, 2025 at 8:38 PM
Topic: 2000 civic si, melting fog light wires?
Posted By: BrandonClaps
Subject: 2000 civic si, melting fog light wires?
Date Posted: January 26, 2004 at 12:32 PM
ok i have OEM fog lights on my 2000 civic si. my question is the other day i had them on and i saw smoking coming from my steering column (where the harness is) i looked in there and the fog light harness was melted/burned slightly. Now i'd like to know what would cause this. I'm using the OEM bulbs that orginally came with the fogs. So i'm guessing they gave me the correct wattage. I don't know what else to check. Also why would this happen out of the blue and it hasn't happened in over a year until now. Thanks guys
Replies:
Posted By: forbidden
Date Posted: January 26, 2004 at 12:52 PM
Either there is too much current running throught the switch and small wires, the switch or a relay has malfunctioned or shorted or the actual wire itself may have shorted as well. Have you had any other work done to the car recently?
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Top Secret, I can tell you but then my wife will kill me.
Posted By: BrandonClaps
Date Posted: January 26, 2004 at 1:40 PM
forbidden wrote:
Either there is too much current running throught the switch and small wires, the switch or a relay has malfunctioned or shorted or the actual wire itself may have shorted as well. Have you had any other work done to the car recently?
no the only thing i have done is swapped fog lights with a friend cause his were brand new and mine were a little beat up, both OEM with OEM products. how can i test stuff. like the relay, switch, how do i test all this good stuff i'd hate to replace the whole thing sinceit's not damaged badly, just a little brown. help
Posted By: Teken
Date Posted: January 26, 2004 at 4:20 PM
Regardless of what you want to do. You will have to replace the affected harness which was burnt. If you ignore that simple replacement, there will be a fire, upon the next time there is a prolonged use.
The first thing to do is to varify that the bulbs are rated correctly. After that you need to measure the current draw going through the wire. And compare that to the wire harness being used now.
From there, you will want to varify that the relay and switch are indeed functioning properly.
If you go to the *Relay* forum, you will see a thread where I replied to another member, as to how to test the relay.
The switch would be a simple check, for on-off, and resistive measurment.
I would def follow Forbidden's suggestion and varify that no wire is schaffing against any metal, or shorted to ground.
Regards
EVIL Teken . . .
Posted By: BrandonClaps
Date Posted: January 26, 2004 at 6:19 PM
the switch, it turns on and off, but how would i perform a resistive measurment?
Posted By: Teken
Date Posted: January 26, 2004 at 6:37 PM
Take the switch out of the circuit. Then set your DMM to measure resistance.
Place the probes on the on-off connectors pins, and measure the resistance while in the on-off positions.
In the on position the resistance should measure 0.0 ohms. In the off position, the DMM should display a reading of open, infinite (1) .
If the DMM measures the closed contact position over 2 ohms, you need to replace the switch.
Remember, this does not take into account of contact bounce.
Regards
EVIL Teken . . .
Posted By: sroth140
Date Posted: January 29, 2004 at 12:38 AM
there are a lot of people that melt their factory harnesses on all sorts of bubls. did you relapce it with one of those xeonon bulbs or HID wanna be's? if you did its probably a higer wattage than the factory bulb. some cars can handle it, some cant. a bunch of people on the jbody.org site have melted the cavalier/sunfire harnesses with the upgraded 9005/9006 lights.
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