Had a narrow escape! A few months ago the stereo stopped working but since the car was in the shop they just swapped a fuse and it's been fine since. However, on the way home from work the stereo stopped working again. Hmmmm, fuse again?
I grovelled about on my knees trying to see into the amazingly usefully-situated fuse box. No stereo fuse. Hah, thanks Mazda. Try the "Radio/aerial" one? Nope, that's fine. Balls. The only other thing not obviously working is the clock. Hmmm. Start going through all the fuses to see if any have blown, no matter how irrelevant they seem to the stereo circuit. Aha, found it. "Hazards"
Weird... but true. The hazards aren't working either. Replace with another 15 amp fuse. It blows. OK, so it seems everything that's not an ignition switched live might be on this permanently-open circuit. How the hell am I going to find the fault? Don't fancy wading through the spaghetti of wiring behind the dash to find a dodgy speaker wire or whatever.
But then, it's been fine since it blew last time months back. Maybe it's just some intermittent fault. Disconnect battery, put in (another) new 15 amp fuse. Re-connect battery. Fuse holds. Stereo works. Hazards work. Clock ticks. Winning. Close bonnet, go off and do some other stuff. Go back half an hour later. Fuse has blown. Grrr. Replace with (last) 15 amp fuse. It holds. **** sake, what's going on? Haven't even got my head out of the footwell before that horrible actinic smell of burning wiring makes itself known
...
Gahhhh, there's smoke pouring from behind the doorcard!
Of all the inaccessible, ****ing annoying places! It's about eight fasteners to get it off... quicker option is to pop the bonnet and whip the battery clamp off again. Smoke gradually abates as I hurriedly get the doorcard off. What the actual...
What an absolute dog's knob of an unlikely, one-in-a-million accident that was, then. I'm guessing here, but from what I can see this wire goes from a switch on the doorhandle in a huge loop back to the door mechanism, so it looks to be it's the FB equivalent of the FD feature where a little light comes on to help you find the lock aperture. I can't say I've ever noticed the FB doing this, but that's the only thing I can figure it to be. Anyway, because there's about two feet of incredibly thin gauge wiring in there, it's managed to get itself wedged in the actuating rod for the door lock. And then abraded through. Finally it's made itself a nice cosy circuit and turned itself into a tiny little two-bar electric fire. This is the evidence;
and this is how the wire ended up after its little meltdown. Mmmm, crispy
Guess there's a lesson to be learned here. A couple, maybe. One is that wiring and moving parts don't mix. Another is that fuses generally blow for a good reason! Good job I didn't do what I was tempted to and just bung a stronger rated fuse in
God, I love the way RX-7s always invent new and obscure ways of trying to kill you
