Sorr y to here of your bad luck. Here you were trying so hard…and the hubby…to fix this yourselves and save a few dollars. No one could have forseen this would happen.
I’m sure everyone here hopes that the damage is restricted to one small area and it will be an easy fix for the mechanic.
Yosemite
I have a box of 96 fuses with the number pressed in but no white numbers. made in china. bigger style than the one pictured earlier, but still worrying. maybe I should chuck them, they were very cheap, and stick with Buss fuses?
I only use Littlefuse or Buss. A lot I’ve seen in convenience stores look cheap and unreliable.
Are little or buss made in America? I would like to buy American when possible.
If the assumption is made that the fried wiring was caused by a fuse that did not blow when it should have and not the result of too large a fuse for the circuit, a comment could be made about that.
Some may remember about 10 or so years ago some Chinese fuses being recalled by Harbor Freight that would not blow when they should have.
Odds are that HF bought those fuses from a Chinese distributor who sold them by the container load in the U.S. to who knows how many companies who packaged the same worthless fuses under their trade name and sold them in auto parts stores, mom and pop convenience stores, and so on.
Maybe those fuses are the same ones recalled by HF; just marketed under a different name.
If you have any of those fuses left it would be interesting to apply a load to them and determine at what point they give up.
if its an American owned company the quality still might be good. if the average Chinese worker s quality is not checked, forget it. I worked for and with Chinese folks for many years. the owner wanted good quality. but the load of workers he brought over could not have cared less. I was QC supervisor then and most of them would let bad stuff go on purpose and try to hide it from me just to look productive.
I broke them of that quick. amazing what a few hours with a 9 inch grinder will do to improve a workers effort to do things right the first time, or at least fix their mistakes before telling me it was ready for inspection…
I was testing a bunch of very high priced electronics gizmos the lab years ago. When I switched them “on” they wouldn’t turn on. None of them would turn on. It turned out their fuses were all bad. A ten amp fuse shouldn’t have 1 ohm of resistance, right? The fuses were all marked 10 Amps, but they were all defective. And these fuses were from a well known American high quality component supplier. So it can happen.
Welp, the dealership came back with an estimate of over $3000 to fix the damage.
darn. any word on the cause?
Thats a tough break. You’re out of town, two kids, what else can you do except have it fixed? Although I think I’d take a good look at their lot and simply trade it since you’re at the dealer. You need a car while they fix it, and now they know exactly what they have to do to it. Never a good time but who needs the aggravation?
I don’t see how burning up a couple of wires becomes a $3000 job. The brake lights are not that complicated. Get a second opinion.
Seems to me it’s more than just the brake lights. The OP describes the fuse that didn’t blow as getting hot enough to melt itself into the power distribution center (or whatever Honda calls it) and making it impossible to install a new fuse. Also it probably went long enough that it burned a good deal of the length of the harness to the rear of the car where the short originated.
I envision the dealer replacing the underhood fuse panel in it’s entirety, the body wiring harness that includes the brake light wiring (which may include substantial disassembly of the interior), the faulty light out module that started this, and any other melted/burned/damaged electrical items they find on the way.
Even if the complete harness doesn’t get replaced it needs to be completely removed and inspected to make sure the entire electrical system is as good as new.
I agree with @asemaster. Those wires don’t travel alone, and the damage has most likely affected nearby circuits along the entire length of the van. Entire wire harness sections and the fuse block may need replacement. The comment about lights flickering tells me a lot more that the brake light circuit is damaged.