teck7droid

iTrader: (1)

Hey friends, recently my wrx is been doing really strange things in regrards to its electrical system. It all started when a very good knowledgable friend installed Jdm headlights for me lets call my friend Mark. My car was oem boost guage and alarm

I took my friend to do a deal with a local guy (Joe). I paid him $300 plus my oem bugeyes. Joe insured mark and and I that he had run jdm headlights buy splicing the oem harness with out problems.

Mark my friend, followed joes instruction and the swap was sucessful. with in 30min both joe's and my car had working headlights. The only minor problem that the city light, to the right upper corner of the passanger side didnt turn on right away, i would have to drive the car a couple min so it will turn on. Mark and i figured it was because they simply used plastic fastiners to connect the wires. Regardless everything was fine and i was happy with the splice job.

A week later, i took my wrx to marks house so we can soilder everything splice. I did it in hope to fix that stubborn city light. He soilderd everything but he used alota soilder because he only had Thick guaged soilder. Everything worked the same, even the city light that had problems. Then i figured the bulb was going bad so it didnt bother me.

Everything worked fine for about 3months HERES WHEN THINGS GOT WEIRD
I noticed that as soon as i turned off my car, the red blinking SECURITY would flash on the dash cluster. This was weird because, before, red security would only flash once i armed my oem alarm. Another thing is that when arming or disarming the alarm, my city lights would flash and tail lights aswell. Now i get nothing...?

Heres the most annoying problem Extremely loud and constant relay clicking noises. Before, i would get a quiete relay noise when only engaing highbeams.
Now i get a relay CLICK thats extremely audioable, at least 3x louder then stock. I get it when putting my turn signal, turning on low beams, and seldomly when turning on the highbeams. Furthermore, when moving the light bar to the left of the steering wheel slighty forward, i mean barley moving it and not engageing the bar at all, the relays click really loud. and most of the time the low beams turn off and im left with out lights for a split sec untill i stop touching the column at all. Also, the low beams seems to flick off and on occasionally when using my turns signal and turning the wheel while driving at night.

Mark, re-did the soildering job, and used less soilder with a thiner guage of soilder. He told me that too much soildering would cause a Load, so he fixed that and the problems remained the same. We checked all of the fuses, they are all good.

Please help, what eles can i do to trouble shoot? If its the splicing job that causing the problem, why didnt it happen right away? oh another thing, the horn that connected to the passanger strut was left off and the wire melted onto to my helix dp melting the insulation. This happend after the problems arose.

What could be causing all this? How can i trouble shoot it. Could it be a bad faulty switch to the lights that causes this. The loud clicks come from the glove box when im driving and from the fuse box in the engine bay when i was standing outside. Please Help!

ps. My oem head unit turns on and off consecutivley and will not respont to any commands, i pressed every button. It sometimes get stuck on this mode where it turns on and off rapidly. Even if i take off the car, it doesnt fix. right not its normal i think it has mood swings...

flat broke

Electrical is not something that is easily diagnosed over the internet, but it sounds like you have some known problems that need to be addressed regardless of their occurence in relation to your problems. Fix that horn lead properly(i.e. proper gauge wire, etc.) and any other little issues that you may know of.

Now we'll look at those "splice jobs". Don't take the following as an assault on "Mark's" character, but rather on his understanding of electronics repair. Using the wrong gauge of solder to begin with reaks of a hack job, and creates more problems than just "blob job" joints. When soldering properly, you would apply the iron to the exposed wire of the joint, to heat it up. When using the correct gauge/type of solder, it will flow when put in contact with the heated joint. You should be using heat sinks on both sides of the joint to keep any heat from being conducted up past the joint area. This is how a proper soldered joint is made. Now if "Mark" happend to think that you expose your wire, twist together, then heat the solder up with the iron and drip it onto the joint, we can already tell that "Mark" needs to take a unit or two over at the local community college before he butchers any more cars. My biggest concern would be that "Mark" knew to hold the iron against the joint and to use the heat of the joint to cause the solder to flow, but because he was using the incorrect solder for the application, and didn't use heat sinks, he transfered a bunch of heat up/downstream of the joint which may have had some negative effects on other items in your electrical system.

The absolute best way to troubleshoot your problem is to get/borrow/barter/buy/etc. A set of the factory lamps, carefully remove all of "Mark's" work, and properly re-insulate the areas of the splices. and reinstall to the factory setup. If that works, and works for a while, you might consult someone else about "reinstalling" the JDM lamps for you at a later date. Did you ask why "Joe" was getting rid of the lamps and wanted to swap back to stock in the first place? Because of the connection between your anti theft system, your lighting sysetm and even your HU to your lighting system, you can see why you can cause a widespread problem by merely "messing up your headlights". There is a strong likely hood (hopefully) that by swapping back to stock and doing so correctly, you'll cure your ills. I'm not going to go into all the different reasons incorrectly soldered joints can fail and possibly cause intermitent shorts etc. Just slap it back to stock and see if you dodged a bullet and didnt fry anything further up the harness.

Now for a little modding philosophy. I come from and old school Hot Rod background. No electronic engine nanagement, and cars so simple from an electronics standpoint that you could completelyl rewire one from front to back in a 10-12hr time frame. Even still, I took the time to learn how to do things properly. Part of the Hot Rod culture involves guys that like to tinker and maybe don't know "everything" about a particular job, but figure they can figure it out as it comes up. Those guys, while they might be your best friends, and have the biggest hearts and willingness to help, need to be kept away from you vehicle unless you posses the skills/knowledge to oversee their "help" to ensure that they are carrying out their tasks properly. Things are no different when it comes to modding newer cars. What you really need to do is develop a sense of what the potential for harm from a specific mod is, and then see how much it would cost to repair that worst case scenario. With that information, decide if you have the skills available to you to complete the mod without the risk of causing that kind of damage. If you don't, ask youself, "can I afford to pay the worst case scenario repair bill with the money I save from not having a competent shop with liability insurance do the job"? If the answer is no, thats a warning that maybe you should either gain the required knowledge/skills to perform the task, or leave it to a skilled professional.

As far as the intermittent and delayed nature of your problem, if the solder joints weren't done properly, you could have intermitent connectivity there which triggers your problems. The other possibility is that when the connections were soldered, too much heat was conducted to other areas of the wiring and degraded the integrity of connectors, connection points at circuit boards etc. Lets say you conduct 150* of temp upstream to a circuit board connection who's solder flows at 140*. You can see how that may cause problems. You may have weakend one of these connection points and vibration which wouldn't have normally affected a properly secured circuit, is now causing some problems.

The clicking over in the glove box area sounds a lot like a relay to me. There are numerous reasons it could be making that noise, but typically it should only click once when it goes on, and again when it goes off.

Like I said earlier, return your setup to stock and see if it fixes your problems. If not, leave it in the stock format, and get it to a qualified automotive electrician familiar with Subaru's or your local Subie repair shop.

Good Luck,
Chris

teck7droid

iTrader: (1)

thanks for all the help chris, i will show mark this. The reason why, Joe traded his sti lights for 300 plus stock was because hes putting his car back to oem. It was a deal $1600 for joe's used volk rims and tires, and jdms for my oem crap.

Everything seemed to work well for around 1month. Now i need to located stock headlights... thanks ill keep you informed. Should i buy a wire harness from cc-b? to install the jdms?

flat broke

I haven't researched the JDM headlamp installs because I have an 05 and would probably just swap out to STI HIDs. But if there is an aftermarket plug and play harness, that would definitely be something to check into.

I hope Mark doesn't think I was cutting on him. I re-read my post and I probably did come off a little arogant. I just hate seeing guys hastle with stuff that disables their car when it could have been easily avoided.

Good luck,
Chris

teck7droid

iTrader: (1)

thanks for your help. Dont worrie mark is a cool guy he didnt take it the wrong way.

teck7droid

iTrader: (1)

my friend mark soilderd the correct way. He didnt simply twist then drip. he held the soilder gun under the wires and the soilder on top of the wires. He said he didnt need to worry about frying electrical components because that only happens when the circuits are near by, and that the gun has adjustable heat so he set it wasnt on ot the hottest degree.

flat broke

That's good news. The likelihood of anything getting damaged is pretty remote, so check all your connections at the old splice points, and hopefully things will start to shape up. How are things comming with repairing the other wiring prolems like the horn etc? That horn lead when shorted to ground could be causing some problems so make sure you get that taken care of as well.

Chris