Central locking and the engine light

[Chubb]

2002 ST-R 3.0l td manual
Hey guys, A new battery, a new alternator plus many hours of checking for a parasitic draw has been futile, a day after full charge if not driven the car is dead, I pulled the negative off and did the old school test light and she glows like a firefly so I know there's a problem but the usual pull the fuses doesn't find it, that being said I pulled the central locking for the remotes while checking it and dumba*s that I am I forgot to plug it back in, the engine light was flashing and after I rechecked everything, found the unit unplugged so I plugged it back in and the engine light went out, woohoo, but now its interesting, the remote unit is not connected to power, earth wire is grounded, unplug it and the engine light flashes, plug it in and the engine light goes out, so please oh mighty sages of the Navara help a lowly mortal solve this parasitic demon that plagues me, my last resort is to burn it in sacrifice.
Thanks for your help in advance guys and girls.

 

[Old.Tony]

Ok Chubb, let's try and clear things up a little:

* If the central locking device is unplugged, the parasitic draw is gone
* If you plug the central locking device back in, the parasitic draw returns?

I have two questions.

1) Have you measured the parasitic draw in amps? You need to put an ammeter on the battery negative (connect one side to battery negative, other side to the lead) and check the current load while the central locking device is unplugged then plugged in.

2) Have you tried unplugging any of the door solenoids to see if the parasitic draw drops? You might have a bad solenoid.

Sorry I can't be of much more help. I didn't know a 2002 D22 had central locking, it might be an aftermarket thing, but I could be mistaken there (not an expert on the D22).

 

[Chubb]

A parasitic draw test was done before uninstalling anything, it was showing 3.75amps..
numerous shorts being found in the (factory???) trailer plug loom and other live wires just hanging under the dash, engine bay, under the car, in the tray have been disconnected and have eliminated some of it, removing a crap load of aftermarket accessories that had been spliced into the main wiring loom eliminated more of the draw, the central locking was removed totally, it was another of the muppets after market toys, the draw is now 0.3.... so far so good...right??...WRONG... new battery and alternator fitted and tested ok and the battery dies in a day so there's something drawing power but buggered if we can find it, intermittent perhaps???
turns out with all the splicing this idiot did he spliced into anything that showed it had power and had cut the wiring in the main loom to fit his toys, wiring has been rejoined as best as could be expected, this work has been going on for the last 9 months, the last of the aftermarket gadgets is the Autron cruise control, its back to its original problem, the car intermittently revs to 1500 rpm and will not come down to normal till it feels like it a few days later, retraining the ecu does nothing to fix that and if you hit a bump, spin the back wheels on dirt the engine light starts flashing till you turn it off and start the car again, the cruise has never worked and if disconnected from the control box the engine light has a spastic attack, the cruise is being junked next and it should be back to factory wiring, TPS, NPS are new and tested so they are fine, any info on removing the cruise would be helpful as I noticed 3 or 4 wires for the ecu have been cut and I am worried he may have spliced the cruise directly into those wires giving control of those functions to the cruise unit

 

[bods]

Can't help a lot with the cruise, but I fitted one of those E cruise or whatever they call them from eBay to mine. It had a plug in loom that went into the accelerator loom, factory plugs on both ends, the only actual wiring that had to be done from memory was only earth, ignition feed (might not have even had that, it may have got power from the accelerator circuit) and tapping into the Speedo wire behind the instrument cluster.

If it is a generic system, it may have been manually fitted to all the above circuits, but good luck tracing all that... I hope you got it cheap when you bought it, that sounds like a massive headache...

 

[Chubb]

Thanks for that bods, any bit helps, it wasn't cheap to buy but that's Melbourne car yards for ya, I should have bought local, if I can work it out i'll post some pics before I start on it, it'll give you an idea of what I'm dealing with... pics will be before I touch it.

 

[ericcs]

Almost sounds like you need to acquire a replacement (unmolested)loom. Crap job it would be to change, but may be your only option to rid the gremlins?

 

[bods]

Almost sounds like you need to acquire a replacement (unmolested)loom. Crap job it would be to change, but may be your only option to rid the gremlins?

That or become very good friends with the service manual and build your own new harness...

 

[Chubb]

LOL, one to twist your minds and start having fits, this thing has 2, yes 2 cruise control units hooked up to it, I found the second one tucked up away from eyes, an autron and an autostrada, connected one to the other and then connected to the pedal assembly, unplug one and get no throttle response, unplug the other and get throttle but it builds slowly and wont go past 2000rpm, so im going to do a lot of wire tracing and see what this muppet or his mechanic has done, not quite the plug and play system is it guys, plug and stuff things up sounds more like it, I haven't stopped laughing since I found it, I have a weird sense of humour, who the hell installs 2 cruise control systems into one car and has them both active???? still I am amused....WHO DOES THAT SH*T...….. LOLOLOLOL

 

[bods]

Ah that's awesome.... Definitely some weird people out there...

 

[ericcs]

hmmm, Autostrada!
my son has a bt50, came with a Brisbane built autostrada cruise unit. started playing up, wouldnt go past 2000rpm, would cut back to idle, so turn off and on and it was good again until it went past 2k! $400 for a new brain, $700 to find the problem. Also was a birds nest under the dash!