shorted out 94 escort - dead in water?!

[silverfox94]

you'll love this...

I had pulled the ignition switch away from the coloumn because the barrel had been slightly twisted [by a previous garage visit!] and was a get-round for the time being.

However, I have just managed to short circuit the ignition switch whilst the car was running. My knee pushed the ignition switch's live wire against the steering metalwork. This completely killed the motor so that now only the parking lights come on. Absolutely no life otherwise - not even the red battery light on the dash. The battery is fine though, and those little fuses on it's front look brand new.

I saw a puff of smoke come up from the fuse box and R26 relay switch looks slightly fried, so have ordered that from the ford dealer [no one else had one for some reason]. I guess R26 [Black: 83BG 14N089 CA] is the ignition switch relay - just because it's so close on the board.

So, is there anything else I should check - just in case as it were, as I don't really want to be taking the train home or over stay my welcome at my mates house!

[Selectron]

Relay R26 is indeed the ignition relay so if it looks damaged then it should be replaced. Having shorted the ignition switch to the chassis, I'd be surprised if you haven't blown one or more of the main fuses in the little fuse box in front of the battery, so you should take a closer look at those. Fuses A, B, C, supply current to the interior fuse panel and they should be rated at 80 amps, 60 amps, 60 amps - and I believe you have to remove the battery-mounted fuse box to replace those. Fuses D, E, F are for the cooling fan, heated rear window, and diesel glow plugs respectively, so you probably won't have a fuse F if it's a petrol engine. Is that a 1.6 petrol or 1.8 diesel or what?

If the five main fuses (petrol) or six main fuses (diesel) are ok but replacing relay R26 doesn't bring it back to life then you'll need to start checking the interior fuses. A lot of the fuse slots will be empty so it's best to remove them one at a time to reduce the chances of plugging them back into the wrong slot. If they are all intact then you'll probably need a multimeter or 12V test lamp to start checking voltages to find out where the voltage is missing, because you might have one or more burned-out wires.

[silverfox94]

thanks for the exhaustive response selectron.
it is a 1.6 lx petrol 5 speed manual, with only 3 fuses on the front of the battery. got my fingers crossed on the relay part as the smoke seemed to come from there.

[Selectron]

Your electrics are slightly different to mine then - I have a '95 M-reg Mk5b diesel estate. Sounds like you won't be picking the relay up until tomorrow. If I was desperate then I might unplug the relay and bridge the socket terminals for the relay's switched contacts with a piece of wire, but if you're not too familiar with vehicle electrics then that's probably best avoided in case you end up bridging the wrong terminals and make things worse. Hopefully a replacement relay will bring it back to life.

[silverfox94]

I considered bridging the contacts, but there's 4 prongs in the R26, which threw me slightly!

yep, should get the relay tomorrow morning with some luck and will let you know how it goes... I don't have much faith though! :-)

thanks again btw.

[silverfox94]

well, I have replaced R26, but no life, so will try going through the wires and fuses with a multi meter.

... just wondering if there's a chance I might have triggered the immobiliser?
if so, is a trip to Ford my only option?!

off to check the usual suspects now too...

[Selectron]

I'd still be thinking in terms of a blown fuse rather than the immobiliser. Does the red anti-theft/alarm led on the clock illuminate when you switch the ignition on? If not then I'd check for 12 volts on both legs of fuse 29, rated at 15 amps - that's the sixth slot along from the left on the bottom row of the interior fuse panel, and it should be live at all times, even with the ignition switched off. You can leave the fuse plugged in, and there should be two tiny holes in the flat end of the plastic fuse body, through which you can probe for voltage - meter common lead (black) connected to a good ground point, and then probe each leg of the fuse in turn with the meter's red probe. Voltage on one leg but not the other indicates a blown fuse, while voltage on neither leg indicates that voltage isn't even reaching the fuse slot, probably indicating that one of the main fuses A, B or C in the engine bay is blown. Actually, amongst other things, fuse 29 powers the interior lights so a real quick way to check the fuse is to see if your interior lights work.

If you think it's an immobiliser problem then I'm not likely to be able to help since I'm only familiar with the basic alarm system, because that's all that's fitted on mine - the finer points of the PATS anti-theft immobiliser are a mystery to me.

The majority of the Escort owners here are in North America and Canada, and their Escorts are completely different vehicles to ours - different engines, different electrical systems etc. We do get visitors from the UK but not too often. If it starts to look like an immobiliser issue then I'd suggest that you head for one of the UK Escort forums, where you'll get more info than you will here. I can't say there are any which I'd particularly recommend, but I'd probably start with http://www.escortevolution.co.uk/forums/ and that has an electrical sub-forum.

For now though, I'd concentrate on fuse 29, and hopefully that will lead you in the direction of the main fault.

[silverfox94]

Selectron, you are spot on.

Checked fuses A,B,C with the multi-meter and found that despite not being visible, fuse B had blown, just as you said. So I have replaced that, and now found that the battery is pretty much dead after all that work.

Just tried jump starting it though which brought it all back to life. The left hand ignition connection seems to be blown too so I'll have to get a new one of those on Monday, but seems operable enough for now. Think I'll also wrap it in insulation tape so this never happens again.

Thanks again - great advice and really helped cool the brain! :-)

[Selectron]

That's great - pleased to hear it. Yep, wrap some tape around it and then set some time aside later for a proper repair. Thanks for letting us know - it's always good to get a happy ending.

[silverfox94]

bit off-thread, but here goes:

got a new ignition switch from the scrap dealer: 10 quid.

however this one had a white plug which was wired slightly differently (not that I noticed straight off) - it managed to start the car without turning on the fuel pump or any other important electrics, resulting in a very loud scraping noise from the engine - turned it off straight away. thankfully got a replacement from self same scrap dealer which sorted that out. seems that the fiesta has a white plug, and the escort has a black plug.

and for what it's worth, managed to fix my slow indicator problem by extracting the relay on the steering column, opening it up and spraying a fine mist of wd40 into it. hopefully this helps someone - cheaper than buying a new one! :-)