Fried some wires, What to do next? Options

[john77]

Okay, before anyone else says it, yes, I'm an idiot. Now we have that out the way...

I've been trying to troubleshoot to figure out why my horn isn't working. Last night I thought I'd narrowed it down to the switch and then as I was looking at the wiring diagram my brain had a bright idea.

I figured if I jumped a wire from 30 to 87 on the horn relay base it would bypass the need for the solenoid to be triggered thus bypassing the need for the switch, and if everything else in the circuit was working the horns should sound.

So I just tried it and they didn't. (Was I wrong?)

Then, and now I've stopped to think about it I have no idea why, I decided to take that wire out and instead jump it from 85 to 86 and... puff... a cloud of smoke wafts from under my dash and I quickly turn off the ignition.

On closer inspection I've melted the brown wire (that haynes says should be brown/white) and the red/white wire that both go into the relay base. And I also noticed a brown wire attached to the ground by the fuse box has a blister in it too, although I'm not sure how those two things are connected?

So, what did I do and what do I need to do next? And why didn't fuse 8 pop and save me from myself?

Any advice much appreciated.

Thanks
John

[Tom]

John77,
No, you won't get power to the horn hot side with the ignition switch to off. J-13 needs to be energized. Turning the ignition switch to on should energize J-13. It must be working if you have had power to #86 of the horn relay.
As to the damage being local, really hard to tell without seeing it first hand.
I have never had one of these sockets apart, but sockets like this usually have a special tool to release each contact from the socket, usually used from the front and the contact releases to the back side.
Tom

[john77]

Tom, thanks for posting those diagrams, really appreciate it.

I checked the fried wires this morning and two things became apparent. Firstly, that I'm actually a bigger idiot than I thought - who knew? The relay I was attempting to kill wasn't even the horn relay (IMG:style_emoticons/default/chair.gif) After tracing and pulling the melted wires I discovered it was actually, as the Haynes manual calls it, 'Relay for fresh air fan.' So that would explain why the horn didn't sound when I jumped 30 to 87 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

And secondly, as far as I can see, the wiring gods were smiling and the two wires only melted to each other and didn't damage anything else. The brown just went straight to the ground next to the fuse panel, so that was simple enough to check. The red/white was fused to the brown in 4 or 5 places where they were touching, but so far I've traced at least another 6 inches of it up behind the dash where there's no visible damage.

Does anyone know where that wire terminates? It disappears into spaghetti behind the dash and I'm finding it difficult to follow it. In the Haynes manual the red/white comes out of the 86 on the relay and immediately stops with a number 14 at the end of it, but I have no idea what 14 means.