No electrical power!

[Cowman]

I don't drive my truck daily so this has taken place over the past couple of weeks. Basically, my problem is that I have no electrical power although the batteries appear to be charged. But to tell the whole story ... .



A couple of weeks ago I installed gauges along with the Painless Wiring unit. Everything seemed to be working alright after some "normal" trial and error on the wiring.



A couple of days later I went out to crank her up and no power. I checked everything I could think of and found a blown "40 amp trailer" fuse in the main fuse box. I haven't towed in a couple of months so don't know what caused it. I replaced the fuse and still no power. I put the battery charger on it and the emergency lites started blinking and the flasher unit started buzzing.



I replaced the flasher unit (@ $32)(I live way out of town and it isn't handy to tow or take it to the dealer) and it seemed to be OK except that the "engine lite" stayed on. I disconnected all battery cables, reattached and lite still stayed on. So I made an appointment with the dealer.



The day I was to take it in, I started it up and the engine lite went out like it should, so cancelled appointment.



Went out this morning to start it up and everything is dead again.



Any ideas would be appreciated. It's a real PIA to have to tow it in to the dealer.



Just for info, the way I wired the PW unit is as follows:



1. Heavy red wire to battery through the supplied relay.



2. Ground wire to mounting screw.



3. I attached the pink wire to the "spare fuse" location in the main box using a fuse clip.



4. All red gauges wires are daisy chained and attached to the PW gray wire.



5. All ground gauge wires are daisy chained and attached to the PW ground mounting screw.



6. All gauge lite wires are daisy chained and attached to the "illum" fuse using a fuse clip.

 

[Alan Reagan]

Something is hot and it's draining your batteries. Just a tip on hooking up all the electrical. By daisy chain, I am assuming you mean everything is connected in series. If one item fails or has a problem, everything in that chain will have a problem. Also, by doing that with your ground wires, you can introduce noise problems or possibly get a weak ground because of all the connections. Connect your power wires to the gauges in parallel to the source and ground wires in parallel to ground. That will save you headaches down the road.



The battery killing problem sounds like you might have hooked up the relay incorrectly. It sounds like you might have the relay wired directly to a fuse energizing it and thus powering all the stuff you have hooked to the painless system. Check that connection. The first thing I would do is disconnect what you installed, recharge the batteries and see what happens. If you have a voltmeter with an ammeter capability, disconnect your red wire going to the relay, put the ammeter in series between it and the battery and see if you are getting current draw with the ignition off. It sounds like you may have hooked into a hot circuit (one that doesn't require the ignition to be on to work) and you are draining your batteries.

 

[Cowman]

Thanks for the response Alan. I rechecked the PW (heavy red wire) relay wiring and it is correct per instructions. I'm thinking the "spare fuse" that I plugged the pink wire into may be hot and the problem. I've unplugged it and will see if it retains or loses power over the next few days. I have a manual but can't make any sense of any of the wiring schematics so don't know if the "spare fuse" is always hot - never could understand that stuff.



The PW instructions state that the pink wire should be plugged into the "factory fuse block" and even provides a fuse clip to do it. Anybody else wired the PW to the fuse block and if so which fuse did you use?



I guess I was hoping that since the flasher usit went haywire that it wasn't my gauge wiring causing the problem.