Ever since I bought the Venture it's had a short. I've blown many fuses. I did install a circuit breaker so I don't have to keep buying fuses. It resets when the power is turned off.
Every time I came to a stop, then after idling awhile the breaker would interrupt the ignition circuit and the engine would stop and not restart. After 5-8 minutes it would restart and run good for the rest of the day. In a previous blog I described this problem.
Luckily it never happened at a stop light holding up traffic. Or when I was moving, because the engine was cool. Hint-hint.
Today I was driving slow on a gravel road, in 1st gear. It died going around a uphill corner. I backed up getting out of the middle of the road. This time I checked to see if the water coolant gauge was high, and it was. Ah hah. It's in the circuit that when it gets warm it turns on the radiator fan. It did, as always restart, after a few minutes. When the engine cools a little, the fan switch turns off allowing the ignition circuit and breaker to work again.
When I got home I let the engine continue to run. In less than 5 minutes the engine died. Yipe it's the fan circuit. But where?
I disconnected the fan switch and grounded it. The breaker did shut off the ignition circuit and the fan.
OK what next? I had added a manual switch to turn on the fan in case the automatic switch didn't work. I keep my eye on the water temperature gauge and usually turn on the fan when I think it's getting warm. Thinking about the times it died I had not turned on the fan, the automatic circuit went on, but the fuses/circuit breaker caught the short before the fan made any noise. With the engine running I could not hear the fan start up either.
So now I disconnected my manual switch and the fans/engine came on like they should. There is a ground wire on the manual switch so the internal light works. I disconnected the ground and reconnected the switch. Everything worked correctly still.
I taped off the ground. Put everything else back together. Tested one more time. Alright!
No more engine stalling. (I hope)
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