Electrical - where to begin

If I wasn't in a hurry, the most I would have waited might be a year at most...
And that would only have been if I had recommendations from other customers and had seen museum quality results.

Hindsight is 20/20, I know. But I am amazed you had the patience to hold on for 2 whole years.

At this point, I would not want the guy anywhere near the truck... That would be big "HELL NO!" vote for me.

B-train said:

Probably not based on what I've read. It seems as though he's more of a body guy, not whole car guy. If he let it go out the door in a condition electrically worse than it arrived, he's not good enough at his job

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MassHoe04 said:

If I wasn't in a hurry, the most I would have waited might be a year at most...
And that would only have been if I had recommendations from other customers and had seen museum quality results.

Hindsight is 20/20, I know. But I am amazed you had the patience to hold on for 2 whole years.

At this point, I would not want the guy anywhere near the truck... That would be big "HELL NO!" vote for me.

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The first thing he did was take it TOTALLY apart. Nuts and bolts in little plastic container. I didn’t know how I could pick it up and even begin to hope I had all the pieces n parts.

I tested all the fuses in box under the hood - 24 come up ‘short’. The big fuse for the A.I.R. system isn’t even there.

fuses that register as short have to do with everything lights, fuel, O2 sensors, instrument cluster and more. The PCM fuse tests normal.
The fuses are not blown. I did not test relays or do a ‘see-if-it-works‘ for the part corresponding to the shorted fuse. There was weather moving in.

i purchased an ECT3000 and i think i am using it correctly. i am supposed to be able to follow the short with it but didn’t try that yet. not really sure where to begin with that.

I hope tomorrow morning to take the fuse box off and check to make sure what’s plugged into the PCM is indeed plugged in.

Oh - I did find a - what appears to be - comprehensive chart of all the grounds. Should I check all of those?

Am I on the right track or should I be doing something else? Thanks to you all!

Went back out after weather threat and did a check of the items that we could. The only things that really didn’t work were the R puddle lamp and the rear parking lamps.
Everything else we could test worked fine.

Going to test fuses in the other 2 boxes now.

Couldn’t find third box under dash - until a couple weeks didn’t even know there was one. Getting cold so came back in.
Anyway, almost all tested short in the side box, 1 did not register at all - that was for the starting system. Only 8 were ok.
This is all making me very nervous.

Moosemoon said:

Couldn’t find third box under dash - until a couple weeks didn’t even know there was one. Getting cold so came back in.
Anyway, almost all tested short in the side box, 1 did not register at all - that was for the starting system. Only 8 were ok.
This is all making me very nervous.

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what do you mean by tested "short"? some fuses have constant power and some only have power when the vehicle is on or when the particular option is being used.

Doubeleive said:

what do you mean by tested "short"? some fuses have constant power and some only have power when the vehicle is on or when the particular option is being used.

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Yeah- I think that I didn’t do this right. So, will try again tomorrow. This is all new to me. Thanks for confirming my error.

When you refer to "short", are you testing each fuse with one of the test leads on each side of the fuse terminal and the other test lead to the battery ground terminal?

Fuses shouldn't have a direct path to ground, they're meant to protect circuits against overload and dead shorts.

What tester do you have and what setting are you using?

Did you say you had or could get a wiring diagram? This might be needed to identify what components have a body ground. I don't know how far the guy disassembled and what was painted, interior and exterior or just exterior, but he could have reattached a ground to a painted-over stud or threaded hole.

I'm just trying to get a better picture of what's going on.

Baja_Bob said:

Did you say you had or could get a wiring diagram? This might be needed to identify what components have a body ground. I don't know how far the guy disassembled and what was painted, interior and exterior or just exterior, but he could have reattached a ground to a painted-over stud or threaded hole.

I'm just trying to get a better picture of what's going on.

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Thanks. I am using Power Probe ECT 3000. I have a DMM as well.
However - the ‘shorts’ are totally my user error
Going to try again later today.