At the age of plus minus 13, I came across a small, old motorcycle and decided to revamp it all on my own. One electrical mistake made by me, nearly caused that bike to burn to the ground. As it was burning, I tried to pull the burning wires off. Those burning wires caused serious damages and burns to my hands that day.
Which resulted in the project being delayed while my hands were healing. Realizing I need to get help from my older brother as he had more electrical knowledge than I had. That pain and damages did not cause me not to become an auto electrician in later years, I am possessing an auto electrical repair shop for the past 20 years.
This is not to scare you not to do your own small electrical repairs on your vehicle yourself. However, I like to give some advice that the same things do not happen to you. If you have any knowledge about electrical and a few elementary tools, you can tackle small electrical defects on your car.
First you have to become an electrical diagram for your car, and you must make sure it is the right one for your cars model and make
Where to find a wiring diagram for your car
· Go online and see if you can find a free download of the diagram you need diagram.
· There are complete workshop manuals for sale online.
· If you have a friend with the same make and model find out if he haven't got a manual, then you can make copies.
· If you know somebody that is working at a dealership, you may ask him but take note dealerships normally have an agreement with their employees, about sharing info to any customer.
Where to buy the basic tools
· Start with your local spares shop, normally they have some tools for sale.
· If you want to buy quality tools, you will need to find a shop that specializes just in tools.
· The bigger convenient shops do normally keep the basic tools in stock
Just a word of caution if want to buy a test light, make sure you do become one that is fitted with LED's. As a normal test light with a globe can cause damages to modern cars that are equipped with electronic systems.
For any small automotive electrical defect on your car, you must use your diagram to find all the fuse boxes in your car. All modern cars do have multiple fuse boxes.
The way to go for you as a novice after you has found all the fuse boxes. Then by using your test light and touching the fuses, the test light must illuminate on both ends of the fuses. If the test light only illuminates on the one side of the fuse this means that the fuse is blown.
Then you must make sure you replace that blown fuse with an appropriate amperage fuse. Replacing that blown fuse may solve your problem. If your actions do not solve the problem, you can decide to call on an auto electrician.
If that fuse you have replaced keeps on blowing there is a short on the car, and your problem is more serious than you thought. Never replace a blown fuse with a fuse that has a higher amperage rate than the one you have removed.
Because that is what caused my bike to burn and can cause your car to burn as well.