Shopping List of things not working - '07 NS Pajero Petrol Manual

[74fpv]

Looking for a bit of direction. On the way into the city on Thursday (raining), about halfway there all of the below just stopped working. Fortunately, I still had wipers, headlights and brake lights as it was a wet afternoon drive.

• Indicators
• Hazards
• Central Locking
• Interior reading lights ( front and rear)
• Rear wiper
• All door ajar indicators illuminates although doors closed

This morning I was on a mission to check all the fuses and to my amazement, all fuses ( cabin and engine bay) are still 100 OK.
Info online indicated that it was likely fuse 15
I can confirm there is voltage at the fuse positive side

Does anyone have any fault-finding pointers?


Cheers Jason

[Keithyv]

How did you check the fuses?

Also all the ones under the bonnet checked as well? Fusible links etc..

[74fpv]

How did you check the fuses?

Also all the ones under the bonnet checked as well? Fusible links etc..

tested with a multimeter. Yep all are ok

[Homer007]

You've probably already tried this idea: disconnect the battery for 15 minutes and then connect it back up again.

[disco stu]

I've heard talk of the cigarette lighter fuse causing weird issues, but I think it was the one on the wiring close to the lighter itself. No idea of models this applied to except it was later than gen 2. Worth a check at least

[erad]

I have looked at the wiring diagrams for the items listed in the first post. All of these items are controlled by the ETACS ECU. Fuse 7, 22 and 16 supply the ETACS ECU (according to my Max Elery W/S manual), so I would carefully check these fuses, both for continuity and also for quality of the contacts. Driving with a fair electrical load on would have reduced the voltage a bit, and this may have been enough to upset the ETACS ECU. I Note that the front wipers are controlled by the front ECU (wherever that is - and the ETACS ECU for that matter as well). This could explain why the front wipers were still working whilst the rear wiper was not.

[74fpv]

Cheers everyone. Same sort of conclusions. Will try the battery disconnect, and see if that "resets" the ETACS ECU ?? Continuity of all fuses were perfect, and a visual of all of the ones I pulled and re-inserted seemed to be spot on.
As it was raining pretty hard when it happened I am wondering if there is some sort of earth fault due to a wet connection or damaged wire.
Is there a way to test this from the neg side of the fuse ? See if there is some sort of connection that would be present if it was shorted?

[rodsfromday]

Following

[erad]

It is difficult to test for earth leakage, but one way is to use the Resistance scale on the negative side of the fuse. Ideally, you are looking for zero resistance (a short circuit), but in practice, if you have, say a 15 watt bulb on the circuit, the resistance of that bulb will be 9.6 ohms. If you have 2 in parallel, the resistance will be 4.8 ohms. We are getting close to the theoretical zero or short circuit case here. If you do try this method, your test leads in the meter have some resistance as well, so short the leads together and record the resistance reading (on the Ohms scale, not the 20 K Ohms scale or like that).

Ideally, if you have a short circuit, it will blow a fuse, and then blow another when you replace it. You then KNOW you have a problem. However, often you have some leakage, which saps the power before it gets to the device you are powering. Low voltage on your device...

Most likely is that you have a dirty electrical joint somewhere. With low current draw, you get full voltage at the device, but as soon as the current draw increases, the high resistance joint heats up and you then get nothing. The joys of older cars... In this case, the dirty joint is likely to be well upstream from the fuse - maybe even in the fusible link which typically is mounted before the device fuse. An auto electrician can use test leads which measure the voltage drop from point A to point B, and he can then estimate if that drop is normal or not.