Customer Gets Burned Buying Death Trap Blazer

this is a 2000 chevy s10 blazer and it's pretty rough so the the young man who brought it here he just bought this i think he kind of got taken advantage of or ripped off by a facebook flipper we'll take a tour but it's got kind of all the hallmarks of a flipper anyway i guess he drove it it drove good stopped good ran good no no warning lights or any any kind of deal breakers so he bought it and as soon as he got it home it just kind of kind of fell apart on him anyway he wasn't really even sure what was wrong with it i've taken a kind of a cursory look at it it has no breaks the master cylinder is dry so it's probably got a bad brake line the four wheel drive doesn't work the service four wheel drive light is on the check engine light is not on it has no codes but the engine runs like crap it's missing and yeah there's something definitely wrong there he said there's some vacuum lines under the hood that are messed up i don't know if it's just for the four wheel drive system or what we're going to find there he said it did have a p1875 code stored i don't know what that is i haven't looked that up yet and then he also says when he drives it you can smell a burning smell and it smells electrical to him so maybe we got a shorted wire somewhere or something like that a bunch of other stuff the tailgate doesn't open the ac compressor just short cycles so it's probably low on on freon the tires are all mismatched yeah anyway he doesn't have a lot of money to spend he said basically just try to diagnose as many problems as we can in two hours if we can fix them great if not he'll take it home and and try to fix it himself so that's the plan we're gonna look it over sort of get an idea of what's wrong make a list for him and yeah hopefully he can get it fixed up well she's got the 4.3 liter v6 which is just a small block chevy v8 with two cylinders hacked off i believe it's throttle body injection which being a 2000 that's got to be about the last year for that so pretty old school setup really it's like a new alternator the battery light is on but i believe the charging system is working the batteries is fully charged so not sure what's up with that looks pretty decent under here really see we've got some some problems with the vacuum lines he told me about that so we'll have to fix that yeah she's leaking quite a bit of oil but the cosmetics are where we really really lose some points on this guy she's got the full on earl scheib treatment here they just kind of crudely taped off the fender wells or flares whatever you call them and then aerosol overhaul it's got runs everywhere she's got the the advanced rust hiders with the self-tapping screws yeah just paint right over that rust that'll be fine and then it has no breaks give you guys a little clue why that might be that's right compression fittings there's some brake fluid on the floor so yeah that's not gonna work i think the wheels are probably my favorite so they just painted the aluminum rims but they didn't even bother to tape off or mask the tires so the tires are just covered in black overspray i guess it's like free tire black yeah and the rockers are just completely gone on this side you can tell by the uh the multiple multiple choice here on sheet metal screws looks like it took five attempts to get one that would hold that's awesome okay so that's what we're dealing with i'm going to fire it up i'll show you guys how it runs it's not good of course it smells like the bottom of an ashtray all right so the check engine light is working now when i first pulled it in that would not come on so we got some kind of cluster problem or something's going on there see we got over 14 volts but the battery light's still on service four wheel drive low fuel brake lights on of course because the cylinder the reservoir is empty yeah it's just not running very good yeah the whole car is shaking right now maybe you guys can see it all right yeah so we're using the the launch x431 the only codes it has is some u codes some communication codes for the memory seat module and the the airbags but there's nothing here that's really i don't think gonna help us okay so let's just go here and we'll see if we can get some some fuel trims or something i checked the misfires it has no misfire counters we could try generic obd2 but i don't think it's going to help us too much so let's go here yeah she's not happy [Music] so we got nothing on the bank one sensor one the other two are working so we got 14 percent on both short term fuel trims it's adding a bunch of fuel still an open loop well this is a problem right here so that o2 sensor is completely dead also the lights are on headlights parking lights front and rear but the switch is off isn't it okay well that's weird what does this do nothing okay so that might be a problem i better start making a list now also we've lost our service engine soon light kion engine off i think that should be on all the time so i don't know we got some electronic weirdness going on here the four wheel drive does nothing service four wheel drive lights on but it has no codes for four-wheel drive what's up with that i don't know all right let's not worry about this for right now i think it may have daytime running lights which is why the the headlights are on all the time according to service data the service four wheel drive light comes on when there's a code set in the active transfer case module but i don't think i can communicate with that let's see here okay so i got communication with the transmission module yes yeah it has nothing it cannot communicate with the active transfer case module so i guess let's find out where that is maybe that'll give us a clue see now our check engine lights back on i don't know all right we're still working on the four wheel drive the transfer case control module lives down here in the passenger footwell behind the kick panel we've got a wiring diagram we're gonna check powers and grounds but before we even do that come on that black connector is looking kind of green and crusty isn't it let me see if i can get it apart and we'll uh we'll assess the situation bingo baby the green krusty's all right what is that that is the orange wire pin d what does pin d do looks like it should be hot at all times so that's the main power feed for the transmission control module that's what gives it power to run the stepper motor or whatever actually shifts the gears so that's a problem all right we do have power there and a ground so i think maybe we can just clean that terminal up hopefully the pin in the module looks okay so yeah let's do some scraping and some spraying and possibly we can save that thing yeah same story on the orange one we'll try it see what happens so i think for this guy we'll try these tweezers they look kind of like a file almost i don't know that thing's pretty loose i wonder if we can de-pin it some way we go all right let's see if we can get a terminal release tool in there there we go okay yeah she is crusty [Music] so [Music] let's give her a little tweak here that's more like it okay now we gotta tweak down the little locking tab so that's about as clean as we're gonna get it there we go now where's my locking tab there you are beautiful think that'll work hopefully i didn't tweak that terminal too far i don't think i did i did the same thing to the module so we should be able to just plug this guy in and see what happens i don't want to use dielectric grease on these we probably could on these high amperage terminals but on this guy might cause some problems you don't usually want to use any kind of of a grease on a on a communication line low voltage or low amperage stuff like that well we still have no communication with that module at least as far as i can tell so the service four-wheel drive light's still on all right we know we have this power and this ground but it looks like we do not have this power and or this ground so it should be pin 10 and pin 16 well e10 e16 on that orange connector and i'm back probed into those with the key on and we have no power so i think pop this guy out here and just hook it up to a ground yeah we got no power there so we need to check the fuse four-wheel drive fuse 15 10 amp all right 15 amp fuse that guy right there and it is good huh okay so we've got a problem somewhere between there and the transmission module by the way check this out that's the door striker and they've uh they've welded a patch in there to reattach that this thing is this thing's been around all right we're missing this power here to e10 and there's a splice pack sp 200 and out of that comes some stuff here for the front drive clutch solenoid so that's on a different diagram there's a solenoid right there so this brown wire should be hot with the key on and i'm pretty sure that's the solenoid right there and it is not hot with the key on so that means we have well we likely have no power after this c203 i don't know where c203 is we'll see if we can find that also we might be able to test this transfer cased transfer case shift control switch which i believe is the panel on the dash that comes out of a splice at the instrument panel let's find c203 well according to service data behind door number one that great big thing right there should be c203 i believe that's for all the controls in the dash so yeah the pin we want is k2 and k is the second row from the left i don't know where 2 is must not be at the top because that's not populated so it must be on the bottom side uh flip that back up can you see the bottom side of it not really [Laughter] oh boy all right folks we can call off the search we found the burning smell there's our brown wire going into k2 it's melted all the way up the harness it's like it melted into this green wire probably melted into a bunch of other wires so i think we're going to find a big mess in here he's lucky that thing didn't catch on fire and the next question is what caused that to happen there's got to be a short somewhere downstream of that i would think to cause that wire to burn up i don't know that's a problem though big problem all right folks things have escalated quickly uh so we were missing power here which comes from this sp 200 splice pack i found that it is that little guy right there actually it's only the first three pins of that little guy there's four splices in that connector uh but we got big problems so the splice pack there's five wires in the splice pack i believe that yeah one comes in on h and then it goes out to the control module yeah that's this one right here and then terminal g in the splice pack goes to well it's shown better on this page so this is g terminal of the splice pack and one wire goes to the four wheel drive indicator switch which i believe is in the front axle and the other goes to the vehicle control module the vcm which is the computer the ecm the pcm whatever you want to call it so here's the problem i'll try to show you so there's the splice pack pin one pin two pin three so the the wire coming out of the third pin is fine not worried about that we have a melted wire coming in which is the power feed to the splice pack and then we have a melted wire that goes out and it goes that way down the wiring harness the problem is there's two wires that come out of this splice pack that are both brown that both go that way down the wiring harness and i don't know you see this one is melted the other one is fine i don't know which one is which if it's the feed to the computer or the power feed to the four wheel drive switch in the front axle somewhere one of those wires has shorted to ground and then i don't know somebody put in a bigger fuse or something and they just they just made a terrible mess out of this so yeah this is not a good situation so we've got a melted wire that runs all the way through this harness well actually it's probably melted all the way from the fuse box all the way across the dash through the connector down here into the splice pack and then back across the transmission hump back out through the firewall on the driver's side and then up into the engine bay somewhere so we got two problems the first problem is i have no idea where that wire is shorted to ground it could be anywhere from the splice pack all the way out to you know the front axle or the pcm the middle of the engine bay you know who knows and the second problem is even if we did know where it was shorted to ground you know what the hell can we do about it to fix this it really needs the entire wiring harness from the fuse box all the way over here to this big connector and then from this connector the harness that goes all the way out into the engine bay i mean that's that's like the entire wiring harness for the truck you know first of all you'd never find one of those because all these things are in the crusher at least around here these things rusted out like crazy and then even if you could find one you'd spend a month of sundays putting that putting that stuff all together i mean it's a major job the whole dash would have to come out center console had to come out yeah i don't know even if we just clip that stuff you know and disabled the four wheel drive or overlaid some wires you know what else has has those have those wires melted into you know that could easily be the reason why we have the battery light on and why the check engine light sometimes doesn't come on you know anything in this harness is now suspect yeah i mean you can see all the wires are just stuck together i don't know i hate to say it but it almost would have been better if it went up in flames at least then yeah at least then we'd have some closure well i thought about this overnight there are three brown wires that come out of that splice pack and go through the firewall over here kind of underneath that cruise control servo so one of them goes right here to the solenoid for the front axle i believe that one is fine that's the one that's kind of by itself in the splice according to the diagram anyway the other one goes either here to the the vcm the computer on this terminal here pin 13 or it goes down here kind of behind the intake manifold or sorry the the air filter box underneath that cloth wrap there there's a plug for the switch in the front axle that tells the four wheel drive that that's engaged and it runs well let's put it this way i have a hard time believing that the wire is shorted to ground in that loom that runs along the cowl there to the ecm there's just it's well supported there's nothing for it to really rub on but this one over here behind the air box it runs along the fender well and it looks pretty crusty down there it's underneath the abs unit here i think we're going to peel some of this stuff out of the way and maybe just get a look around oh somebody's been in here what were they doing uh all right folks that was a bust i can't see any real problems down there the top of the fender is it's rusty but there's nothing that pokes through the harness i just i don't see any i don't see anything alright folks i've made a revelation i pulled the air box off and things became a lot more clear so if we look at this connector looks okay from a distance but on closer inspection see that wire it is melted then if we follow the harness which is this guy right here it's leaning against the steering column but more importantly it is contacting the exhaust manifold so that lady is your problem we have a dead short on that wire man that's crazy so that makes me feel a whole lot better well dial up the sketchiness i chop the wire that comes from the fuse to the splice and i just clipped onto it with a feed directly from the battery and i powered it up we put an amp clamp on here so it is pulling some amperage through there but not very much anyway long story short guess what we can now communicate with the transmission or the transfer case control module so this is the live data that's pretty cool so that means that this gizmo works or at least we can talk to it so i wonder what else we can make work so we've got a light now for two too high we never had that before lucky lucky okay let's start it up look at that no battery light no service four-wheel drive light [Music] 20 millivolts is 200 milliamps that's nothing so whatever was short it is not shorted now now the box is out of there now it's supposed to be a 15 amp fuse but i will bet you dollars to donuts that somebody put something in there with a little more horsepower and they made a big mess for us so now now what can we do about that i'm kind of thinking maybe we just overlay a couple wires and uh yeah let the chips fall where they may definitely don't park it in the garage and we'll send this guy on his way uh some time has passed on the little blazer we've uh i've just been getting slammed let me catch you guys up i've got good news and bad news on the wiring so the good news is this harness here that runs down to the switch is made from a heavier gauge wire and for whatever reason it did not it did not melt wires are in good shape other than the section that actually contacted the manifold and i've gone ahead and patched in a piece for that the bad news is that the the contact was actually on the return wire from that switch which means that all the current that melted those wires went through the switch in the front axle and i imagine it's not rated for any kind of any kind of an amperage load it's just designed to turn on a circuit in the computer so there's a good possibility that the the switch in the axle is going to be melted or the contacts are are fried yeah i looked at it it's at the bottom of the axle i don't want to pull it out because we're going to lose all the fluid so we're just going to put this wiring together the wiring i think is fine and then if it doesn't work we may suspect the switch i talked to the customer he said go ahead and just overlay the wires and he's willing to roll the dice on whatever damage is in the harness so that's fine with me as far as i'm concerned that's a a pre-existing problem we haven't done anything to make that any worse so what i've done right here if you guys can see it i've just snipped off that burned wire at the back of the fuse panel and i crimped on a new wire covered it up with some heat shrink and i'm just going to run that wire you know loosey-goosey underneath the bottom of the dash so there's that wire right there we'll bypass the big bulk connector we'll just loop it around and then we're going to snip off all these wires at the factory splice and really there's two wires that go out through the firewall one for the computer and one for the solenoid for the vacuum those are fine we'll reuse those the third wire that runs out to that switch we're gonna have to bypass so what i did is i just popped out the grommet for the antenna and i stuffed a wire right through that guy i think there should be only three wires left in this splice i've already cut the burned up wire coming in and the burned up wire going out so we're going to want this one that goes i think to the com to the tccm the control module we're gonna want this one right here that goes out to the solenoid this one which goes out to the vcm these are tiny wires 22 american wire gauge 0.35 square millimeters okay so okay that should do it now i've got to tape all this crap back up because i cut i don't know two feet of tape off this thing trying to get down to that splice all right folks we're looking pretty good all taped up loomed up connected up should work just fine yeah same story under the hood so our new new patch wire runs behind the abs module right back down to the original connector and i just chopped off that wire and it's just hanging out there of course we'll reuse the original return wire we just have to supply the new power feed and then i've patched up the harness running down to the switch i tied it off to that power steering line so it's nowhere near the exhaust manifold and that should work hopefully with some luck it's like we were never here i got the fuses all sorted out they had a bunch of the wrong sizes installed i talked to the customer he told me that when he first looked at it that fuse 15 for the four wheel drive had a 25 amp fuse in it and when i looked at it had a 15 amp fuse in it it's actually supposed to be a 10. so we're all set there everything looks pretty good under here i did install a fitting in that vacuum line just to clean that up a little bit instead of having the hose jammed in the other hose and the lines are kind of long he'll have to shorten that and tidy that up but it'll be good enough for now i am going to keep this this model in mind for my master list of gm's worst air box designs this thing is a real delight you see how the upper radiator hose goes right over top of it and then the other side's jammed up against the fuse box you wouldn't think it would be that hard to design a box to hold an air filter that can actually be opened and serviced by a normal human but for whatever reason the concept is just out of grasp for the gm engineering team they just can't figure it out i love the part where there's four screws holding the lid of the air box on but there's only one bolt holding the whole stinking air box in the car all right so our warning lights are out we have something here yeah that's working right come on little buddy you can do it maybe it's got to move forward a little bit there it is all right try low yeah i felt it she's a lot of fun with no breaks so that means our switch must have survived because i believe these lights won't come on without that axle switch working there it is all right good enough for me all right folks we're done the blazer lives to die another day here's what i think happened i think the harness has been rubbing against the manifold for a long time and when it does that it should just blow that 10 amp fuse shut that circuit down and it's not really a problem the problem is you lose your four-wheel drive and you have all those lights on on the dash so it probably hasn't had four wheel drive for a long time and then along comes our intrepid facebook flipper and he wants to get that four wheel drive working so we can get every nickel he can out of it so he probably put it put the 10 amp fuse back in and it immediately blew and so he you know fixed it by just putting a 25 amp fuse in the circuit and at that point this 22 gauge wire became the fuse and yeah buyer beware i guess i don't really know what what he could have done about it you know you can inspect that but how would you know to look for a shorted circuit in the four-wheel drive system that's potentially going to burn your car down you wouldn't anyway doesn't matter i was uh yeah i was kind of thinking it was going to be the end of it when i saw all those burned wires in that splice pack there's still i'm sure is damage to the other wires in that that wiring harness and like i said there could be some cross you know cross shorting between different circuits that could cause problems in the future but as long as we have the right fuses in the right positions you know those circuits should be protected and that that risk should be it should be pretty minimal otherwise i don't know what we could really do about it like i said it's not economical or maybe even possible to replace all those wiring harnesses it just it wouldn't be worth it yeah what would be worth it is for you to go down to the comment section and type out a comment tell me about your uh experience with a shady facebook flipper or uh yeah whatever else you got to say thanks guys for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Watch Wes Work

Views: 367,738

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Id: rToeiNxSCR8

Length: 43min 14sec (2594 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 13 2022