Gauges Fuse Keeps Blowing

[RandyR8845]

Hi and thank you in advance for any help you may be able to offer

I have a 1998 Corolla that is blowing the Gauges fuse. As the Gauges fuse is in-line of the charging systems, it causes the battery to run low. The battery is new and I replaced the alternator. A repair shop said they checked wires for ground faults and they think its the integration relay that has failed, but said they could not get the part and seemed reluctant to fix the car.

Anyone have experience with this sort of problem? Any idea on what else I should look for?

I currently have the lower dash removed, but have not found the integration relay yet. I believe its behind the same panel as the gauges fuse?

Thanks
Randy

 

[Paul J.]

Same problem

Hi and thank you in advance for any help you may be able to offer

I have a 1998 Corolla that is blowing the Gauges fuse. As the Gauges fuse is in-line of the charging systems, it causes the battery to run low. The battery is new and I replaced the alternator. A repair shop said they checked wires for ground faults and they think its the integration relay that has failed, but said they could not get the part and seemed reluctant to fix the car.

Anyone have experience with this sort of problem? Any idea on what else I should look for?

I currently have the lower dash removed, but have not found the integration relay yet. I believe its behind the same panel as the gauges fuse?

Thanks
Randy

Hi
I have exactly the same problem on a Corolla 1998
I've tried to find the fault without success.
Did you find a solution to the problem? If you did I would be happy if you could share your knowledge about what the fault on your car was.

Thanks
Paul J.

 

[RandyR8845]

no luck

I never did find the cause of the problem. From what I read, these sort of problems are common on these cars and it is often a grounding issue. That is, a ground wire, somewhere in the harness, has worn insulation and is intermittently grounding out, thus causing high amperage draw that blows the fuse. By looking for the problem, the harness gets moved around and often the problem seems to go away for a while and then comes back later. Very frustrating. One suggested approach was to isolate the various loads on the circuit to their own fuses. However, this is difficult since everything goes through the integration relay(which I also replaced).


The car also uses oil at highway speeds. From my research on that, I found that Toyota used under-sized pistons and over-sized rings as an attempt to reduce the engine break in time. This was not a problem when we lived in Brooklyn, NY and rarely saw speeds over 35mph. However, we moved to Texas and spend most of the drive time at 65mph. Also, this is my wife's car and we just had a baby. I found a dealer that would give me a trade in of $500 over what CarMax appraised it for. The short of it is, my solution was to get rid of the car.


Good Luck,
Randy

 

[Paul J.]

Hi, thanks for the reply.
I finally solved the problem. I was about to get a new integration relay, but dropped it when you did not have solved the problem by replacing the relay.
I disconnected 1 line at a time from the connector to the integration relay, I found finally the shorted wire. A red / blue wire. Then I followed the cord through the entire dashboard. This was a huge job, and particularly in the Junction Block 3 had multiple connections to the same fuse, so I had to repeat the trick from before, because it proceeded from a different connector I followed the cord until the engine compartment, and found at last that it went down on top of the gearbox, underneath the air filter, to the reverse switch. Shortly before contact was wire shorted to the gearbox.
Hope that others with the same problem can use this.

Best regards
and happy new year

Paul J
Faroe Islands

 

[RandyR8845]

Wow!, That's great work! I wish I had the time and space to work on my car like that. I'll bet others have the same problem...now they have a place to start...and some hope that the problem CAN be fixed.