Magus4

TLDR - At the bottom if you just want to know a possible solution to this.

I had an issue today it went like this -
I just bought a 2004 A/T RX8 and it had the CE light on. Well I decided to take it to advance auto to have them run diagnostics on the ECU so I could fix the problem. Their diagnostics machine wouldn't even cut on LOL... so I took it to autozone right down the road and the guy tried to get a reading and it wouldn't register the car.

Said to hell with it and decided I'd just take it to a mechanic, well just so happens when I go to drive off, my radio didn't work. So I check the fuses of course. Yep, room fuse was blown - also had a 10 in it instead of the suggested 15, but hey I've had the car about a while with no issues.

Screwed around and came to find it didn't blow if I was outside the car, but when I sat down it would. Odd. Read up on some forums, here and other places, main suggestion was sun visor shorting and connectors at the small fuse box in the car. Checked that to no avail. About 20 fuses later I was getting pretty mad.

So I decided to really rethink the whole sitting in the car vs not - Same deal, put the fuse in while outside of the car, good to go, sit down and bam it blows. So I checked under the seat and noted there were quite a few wires. So I disconnected them all and turned the key forward (noting the airbag light flashing I reconnected them). Upon further investigation of the wires I noted that the seat seemed to have pressure on one of them - The one with the black connectors that seems more like a cable coming from it than wires - So I rose the seat up to maximum and seen the pressure was released from this wire. Put the fuse in and has not given me trouble since.

I believe the guy who tried to test my ECU codes at Auto Zone, being about 100lbs more than myself, pushed down and caused the wires to move in a way to cause the short. Only time will tell, I did not note any significant wire showing or anything like that at the connectors or any bare wires touching metal, however.

TLDR--- My short seemed to be in a wire under the driver seat - no seat warmers in my car - The wires with the black connectors at the center front of the seat towards the pedals, had pressure on them from the seat being adjusted too low. I have only seen two possible fixes in about 1hr or forum searches and this was not one of them. Perhaps this may help others.

9krpmrx8

iTrader: (46)

Thanks for sharing.