On Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:05:58 +0000 (UTC), wrote:

David Farber wrote:
Somehow her foot dislodged the connector going to something around the
clutch pedal shaft. It has six terminals and I'm guessing it's some
sort of sensor that detects the position of the clutch so you can
start the car?

Yeah. There will be at least one contact that doesn't close until the
clutch pedal is fairly far depressed; it is there to prevent the starter
from running unless the driver has stepped on the clutch. (It also
prevents a smart driver from doing something clever, like using the
starter to "walk" the car out of an intersection, off the railroad
tracks, etc.)

There was a caller on Cartalk where animals shorted the starter cable
and the car moved "down the driveway" which was up a hill, across t he
street, and almost went over a cliff.

If the car has cruise control, there will be another
contact that changes state when the clutch pedal is barely depressed;
that one is there to cut out the cruise control if the driver uses the
clutch.

I wasn't writing this stuff down

This is a good way to get lost in the middle of an adventure.

Hey, did Indiana Jones take notes?

Then I looked at the schematic
http://webpages.charter.net/mrfixite...ck_Fuse_29.mht

What the heck is .mht and how come IE reads it but maybe not Firefox?

This page has been saved by Internet Exploiter... as an email... with
Quoted-Printable damage. Maybe the least useful format that it was
possible to use, which explains why it's IE's default.

After pulling the lighter fuse, the current drop to about .8A.

Does the car have more than one cigarette lighter socket? An extended-
cab pickup might have an extra one in the back seat. Sometimes people
add one in the bed for accessories... sometimes they even get it on the
same fuse as the one in the cab!

By the way, the [cigarette lighter] receptacle itself was not covered/
protected so it made sense that it was getting to look a bit rusty.

I have seen new cars that had a "no smoking" package from the dealer;
the "ashtray" had a flocked lining to serve as a small storage bin, and
there was a plastic plug with handle in place of the cigarette lighter
element. If the lighter socket on this car is in a place where it is
liable to get drinks and debris in it, finding one of those plastic
plugs (dealer? junkyard?), or a rubber stopper with a bolt in it for a
handle, might be a good idea.

In fact with all the fuses put back in, the current leveled off at
.22A. I didn't know if this was an acceptable reading or not.

That's kind of high. In 24 hours that is 5.28 Ah gone from the battery.
That will run the average car battery down to nothing in about ten days.

I think I remember Pat Voss saying that if a #54 light bulb would
light with the current going out of the battery, it was too much. #54
is the smallest spherical lne, back when lightbulbs were lightbulbs
and didn't speak some European or Asian langueage. Someday I have to
find out how many hundredsths of an amp is a $54.

Some cars have solenoids on the front seat belt reels that allow the
reels to spin more freely when you are getting in and out of the car.
Usually, as soon as you hit the unlock button on the remote or open the
driver's door, the solenoids will turn on. They stay on until either
1) the engine starts or 2) a timeout in the range of 5 to 15 minutes
expires; if you are standing there with the engine not running, you can
sometimes hear a little "tick" from the seat belt reel when the solenoid
turns off. This might account for some of the current draw you are
seeing.

A few newer cars start getting lots of things ready for you when you
open the driver's door. Toyota hybrids will turn on the electric
vacuum pump (which provides brake power assist when the engine isn't
running) and possibly a few other things before you have turned the key.
These eventually time out as well, but the current draw from the 12 V
battery might be surprising for the first minute or two.

Good to know. I will proably be able to use this in about 7 to 9
years.

Matt Roberds