Club126UK
Fiat 126 Chat => Fiat 126 Mechanical Problem Solving => Topic started by: KAL SPL on June 12, 2011, 02:41:42 PM
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For years I have had issues with electrical gremlins that I have never made a concerted effort to fix.
Worse one being the indicators dont flash if my head lights are on and I put my foot on the brake , release the brake pedal and indicators work again.
Changed my car to electronic ignition years ago and wasnt until I wired in a new interior light I notice pulsing the through the globe when engine was running , I assumed it was to do with electronic ignition.
My low beam lights (pretty much all I use) made a noticable drop in brightness as the revs dropped slowing down at night time.
Most of the warning lights on the cluster sort of dim off as others are triggered , the worse one I guess is the actual engine surging cruising at speed , it feels very odd and it was deffinately a unique issue.
Over the last few days I have disected a spare harness I have on my bench in an attempt to construct a new dash for my car , it wasnt until going through the whole thing that I discovered the ignition circut is on 1 big loop.
I always assumed I had bad earths or there was poor joins somewhere in the harness , I wired a relay into the existing ignition feed at the fuse box so it was getting 12V straight from the battery , everything now works as if the car was brand new !
No more dim lights , warning lights are brighter than ever , my indicators work ALL the time , no more pulsing interior light and NO MORE surging which im exstactic about.
Im just wondering if anyone else has the same poor circutry and would be interested in the modification I have done just to rectify the issues listed above.
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Hell yea! That would be really helpful :D
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My indicators stop when I hit the brakes if the headlamps are on. The wipers speed-up and slow down depending on what is on :P
The aircooled did have interesting wiring :D
That relay you wired in sounds like genius! I've used a relay for my headlamps but will give that a go.
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Ohh the wipers I forgot about them , on first speed mine barely move freely , on high they seem to be ok , I will try them now , just another thing that works better :)
I will do a picture guide up with exact wiring , its very very simple actually , dont need any electrical back ground but it may help if you wish to actually understand HOW it works.
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Everyone who ever owned a Fiat from this era can tell you stories about electrical problems. A times I began to wonder if Fiat was owned by a world wide consortiun of auto electricians.
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I wired a relay into the existing ignition feed at the fuse box so it was getting 12V straight from the battery , everything now works as if the car was brand new !
I take it you pulled power from the smaller wire (that attaches to battery terminal) at the fuse box, but where did you feed it to ? light circuits ??
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I used the existing ignition feed on the base of the realy box , that comes from my key barrel and is the normal source for all the ignition system components , I put that on 85 of the relay , 86 to ground , ran constant power from the battery with a 30 amp fuse inline onto 30 , 87 went to the pin on the fuse box that the ignition came from.
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You must be talking about 126 aircooled i presume! Coz in the case of BIS ,I never encountered such power failure in the circuit. :-)
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We only get the air cooled in Australia mate :)
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Had a bit of a rethink on my solution , it may not work with anyone else as I described above because my car has no key barrel Im running a switch for ignition which is linked with accesories.
If you were to do the way I described above then your instrument cluster will get no ignition power and the there will be no ignition feed to the rear of the car , if anyone is interested in actually doing this then let me know and I will work out the correct wiring so it will work with OEM wiring.
The only real difference will be that you have to bridge pin 87 back to 85
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Yeah but it could work, one would simply leave the power in and out of the ignition switch, pick it up once out of the switch to switch the relay, and wore through the relay directly from the battery to power-up the circuits, sure it can be done and may be a brilliant defence against small leaks off the battery.
I will do some fiddling with that concept when I get a moment ;)
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Had a bit of a rethink on my solution , it may not work with anyone else as I described above because my car has no key barrel Im running a switch for ignition which is linked with accesories.
If you were to do the way I described above then your instrument cluster will get no ignition power and the there will be no ignition feed to the rear of the car , if anyone is interested in actually doing this then let me know and I will work out the correct wiring so it will work with OEM wiring.
The only real difference will be that you have to bridge pin 87 back to 85
I'm DEFINITELY interested! Although my lights don't work too badly the indicators could be brighter, and I've already checked the earths. I get the exact same problems you've described but I have an ignition key. Any help would be fantastic, mate especially as no one knows anything about these cars here!
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Theres nothing I DONT know about these cars now , having rebuilt mine from scratch in every aspect to wrecking 3 other cars im full bottle on every niggling problem you can think of !
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I do need to ask this though:
What's the actual cause of the problem here? Not enough current?
Is the car trying to power too many things off a circuit that just can't deliver the goodies? :-
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Given that everything tries to run off 1 continual loop wire I would say yes , primarily it was to small and add to that 20 years of corrosion it just cant cut it anymore.
Cermaic fuses are also not known for there lasting efforts.
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Just for a hoot I looked for the fuse that comes straight off the ignition.
The book seems to think that it's fuse 'A', but removal of this fuse caused no change or effect at all. It seems to be fuse 'B' in my car. However, putting 12 volts onto this fuse from the battery had little to no effect, all the dash lights pulsed on and off just the same with the indicator running..
Only difference was that when I tried to turn the engine off it kept running! :D
Guess I either had the wrong fuse, or the contacts beneath the fuse box need cleaning up, or it's just not a 12v+ issue?
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Fuse B is the 1 I used , Basically you need to double that wire up so it comes back out from that connector while still on the relay box , that goes 87 and 85 on the relay , fused 12V to 30 and 86 to ground.
It should make a noticable difference.
Fuse A is the accesories fuse so that would not have made any difference.
What side of the fuse did you put power to ?
Mines to the side closest to the outside of the car.
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What side of the fuse did you put power to ?
Mines to the side closest to the outside of the car.
The same. Perhaps the contact underneath needs to be cleaned up. If I had the time and patience I'd go cleaning ALL the bloody contacts!
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The first major step to a complete new wiring harness for the front half of the car.
(http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x127/KAL_SPL/Cars/IMG_0203-1.jpg)
(http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x127/KAL_SPL/Cars/IMG_0202-1.jpg)
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I've started investigating the issues on my 650cc and found them to be lights that go off if wipers are used, wipers going slower when brake lights are on etc. etc. I then started labelling the wires up front at the fuse-box to fit relay based power supply for switched circuits etc.... Before I bought the parts I cleaned up the ground connections and re-crimped the charging connection to the genny. This improved things so much that I'm now going to hold fire on the "improvements" until the issues maybe re-occur.
Suffice to say that these little cars have a very "special" wiring layout. Haynes' diagrams doesn't make it any easier to trace either ;D
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Thank me later :)
(http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x127/KAL_SPL/IMG_0312-1.jpg)
and full size version
http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x127/KAL_SPL/IMG_0312.jpg
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Thanks, That does look more straightforward than matching up numbers while translating colours as in Haynes..... ;D
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I actually found the Haynes ones better / more helpful if you are actually trying to track a wire to find a fault/ look for damage.
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cheers for the diagram you can never have too much information! unless its about the parents sex life that is......
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:D lol bis13