Keep a light burning in the window...

So, I'm out with some railfans, waiting on a Pan Am freight, enjoying a record warm March day.  The train passes, and we start walking back to our cars.  I notice my headlights are on.  No clue why as the sun is shining.  I start thinking... Did I accidentally hit the light switch or something?  OR, did my boyfriend show up while our view across the tracks were blocked, unlock the car, and switch on my lights to mess with me?

I unlock the car, and the light switch is off.  Turning it turns on the marker lights and taillights like normal.  The high beams didn't work.  I popped the hood, looked around, and didn't see anything obvious.  I even switched on the AUX power to see if Todd's wig-wags and flashers were the problem.  (No, he hasn't removed his equipment yet)

Fast forward... I am driving home because I can't leave the car parked with the headlights on for an hour or two.  As I stop at traffic lights, I play with switches and stuff and look at the lights reflecting in the cars in front of me.  Things just won't go off.

Pull into driveway, and look at time.  Vic 1.0 had a feature where things like interior lights would shut off if accidently left on by the driver.  I forgot the amount of time it would take.  So I parked the car and looked back in a 1/2 hour.  STILL ON.

A search for correct socket ensued, and the battery was disconnected.  

A little while later, Todd comes over and we poke around under the hood a bit.  Pulling fuses doesn't turn the lights off.  We mess with the battery cable and listen for things turning on and off, etc etc etc.  

So... long and short of the story is the culprit was a connector Todd had used to wire up all his lighting.  One metal bit was brown and burny.  Being electrically illiterate, I guess that was causing a short, thus turning on the headlights alone.  And I think even on high-beams!

We unplugged that connector, hooked up the battery again, and everything was back to normal.

One potentially annoying and pricey fix avoided... THANKFULLY!!

UPDATE: Wires & Starter

As of 3/28/15

Back in March, Vic was dead in the driveway for a while.  It would crank and crank, but not start.  The first day this happened, the battery sounded like it was dieing.  So we picked up a new battery and I installed it ($170 later…). 

Still didn’t start.

After a bunch of time looking under the hood, we decided maybe it was one of the wires in the front wiring harness that had been repaired in the past.  We wiggled stuff and swore internally.  Somehow, the car started and all seemed well.  Then it didn’t.

One thing I noticed was the car would start only if the engine light lit before cranking.  If that light didn’t go on, the car wouldn’t start.  If it was on, it would start and either stay running, or shut off.

We decided then to look at the starter relay.  It is in a box under the hood, along with 2 other identical relays.  We swapped them around, even added a new one, and we thought (again) that all was well.  In fact, I drove the car about 70 miles the next day.  BUT, on the way home the car started to cut out and restart on me. 

Next day, dead again.

So we messed around with it and got it running, then drove it to Taxi Guy to have him check for bad wiring, etc.  The result?  A bunch of bad sections of wiring harness cut out and repaired.  Problem solved.

… until last week when I drove the car .5 miles to a day-job.  When I went to take it on a coffee run, it wouldn’t start.  Wouldn’t even crank.  One tow later, I had a new starter.

So Vic has been worrying me lately.  But I really can’t complain too much, as I have been driving it for 15 years now.  The poor thing is rotting away and there isn’t much I can do about it.  Soon we will swap on the summer wheels/tires and that will spiff it up a bit.  But the ultra-cheap Bondo jobs are really bothering me…