{"id":5156,"date":"2020-10-15T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mechanicalmalarkey.com\/?p=5156"},"modified":"2020-10-15T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T10:00:00","slug":"loose-grounds-cause-strange-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/15\/loose-grounds-cause-strange-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"Loose Grounds Cause Strange Problems"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A Honda Civic came into the shop with a very strange problem: the backup camera would turn on every time the brake pedal was pressed. It&#8217;s supposed to only show up when the transmission is in reverse. While looking at the car I also noticed that the gauge cluster wouldn&#8217;t know the trunk was open when the brake was pressed as well. There was definitely something going on in the wiring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mechanicalmalarkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/2020_10_15_01.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mechanicalmalarkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/2020_10_15_01.jpg?w=800\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5164\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I started out by doing a basic visual inspection of the wiring harness in the trunk and in the trunk lid, where the camera is located. I noticed that some of the harness clips showed evidence of having been removed, so I knew that someone had done some kind of work on the car. The customer confirmed that the car had been in a rear end accident and gotten fixed at a body shop. It would be easy for wiring to get damaged in an accident, and may not get noticed during the repair process, so this made a lot of sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mechanicalmalarkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/2020_10_15_02.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mechanicalmalarkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/2020_10_15_02.jpg?w=800\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5165\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I began pulling the harness out to get better access at it so I could begin untaping it to check the actual wires to make sure none were damaged and shorting together. When I pulled more of the trunk carpet aside, I saw the main ground point of the harness, where it bolts to the body. As soon as I saw it, I could tell it was loose. I tightened the bolt, and the problems went away. When a component&#8217;s ground circuit is flaky due to a loose ground, it ends up grounding through wherever else it can find, which in this case caused other features to activate, like the backup camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator is-style-wide\" \/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">New blog posts every Monday and Thursday, plus pictures throughout the week on <a href=\"http:\/\/facebook.com\/mechanicalmalarkey\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Facebook<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/mech_malarkey\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Twitter<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/instagram.com\/mechanicalmalarkey\">Instagram<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCasCW0ImD3UuLeMu5RAZCXg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Watch Mechanical Malarkey on YouTube!<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mechanical Malarkey <a href=\"https:\/\/mechanicalmalarkey.com\/merchandise\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">T-shirts, hats, and stickers<\/a> are available to order!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">-Dan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Honda Civic came into the shop with a very strange problem: the backup camera would turn on every time the brake pedal was pressed. It&#8217;s supposed to only show up when the transmission is in reverse. While looking at the car I also noticed that the gauge cluster wouldn&#8217;t know the trunk was open [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[28,33],"class_list":["post-5156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-shop","tag-diagnosis","tag-electrical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}