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DH sent me out to do some work on the cars this afternoon. He was sidelined by a stomach bug so I was happy to get out of the house - yuck - 
My car needed another oil change and his needed just one simple task....
All I had to do was pull the center console, disconnect some wires, put it back together, and done. EZ right?
As soon as I sat down in the car I got antsy and called DH from the driveway to ask if I needed to disconnect the car battery. Here's the never listen to your spouse part he assured me that nothing I was doing would expose hot wires and that I didn't need to worry. I should have listened to my intuition :jester:.
So I pull the shift boot, unscrew some screws around the console and start levering it out. As my luck would have it, a penny fell out of the ashtray and square into the cigarette lighter. SPARK
I slunk back into the house and fessed up to the hubby. :cursing: He was PISSED until he googled 'penny cigarette lighter' and got 300,000+ hits.
I pulled the negative on the battery, disconnected the wires to the cig lighter and used some bamboo to fish the UNLUCKY penny out.
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You can see the burn mark on the penny where it arc'd. I figured as much and pulled the blown cig lighter fuse which also shows arc'ing on the blade.
Now, here comes the unlucky part :wallbash: even after checking EVERY SINGLE FUSE IN THE DURN CAR the power windows/lock/trunk release/windshield wipers/ and top no longer work. Despite the valiant little fuse doing it's job I still managed to fry something electrical in the car (seems like it must be one of the control modules)
Thankfully, the car will still run and can function without the suspected module. So, it won't be out of commission while were waiting for a replacement. (And I sure hope it's that module and not some other problem I'm going to have to hunt down in the 20,000 miles of wiring in the car.)
But, heavens-to-betsy, I KNOW better than to work HOT. I hereby tender my resignation of all my awesomeness credentials. I will now go sit in the corner for the rest of the weekend :dunce: and think about what I did.
My car needed another oil change and his needed just one simple task....All I had to do was pull the center console, disconnect some wires, put it back together, and done. EZ right?
As soon as I sat down in the car I got antsy and called DH from the driveway to ask if I needed to disconnect the car battery. Here's the never listen to your spouse part he assured me that nothing I was doing would expose hot wires and that I didn't need to worry. I should have listened to my intuition :jester:.
So I pull the shift boot, unscrew some screws around the console and start levering it out. As my luck would have it, a penny fell out of the ashtray and square into the cigarette lighter. SPARK
I slunk back into the house and fessed up to the hubby. :cursing: He was PISSED until he googled 'penny cigarette lighter' and got 300,000+ hits.
I pulled the negative on the battery, disconnected the wires to the cig lighter and used some bamboo to fish the UNLUCKY penny out.
You can see the burn mark on the penny where it arc'd. I figured as much and pulled the blown cig lighter fuse which also shows arc'ing on the blade.
Now, here comes the unlucky part :wallbash: even after checking EVERY SINGLE FUSE IN THE DURN CAR the power windows/lock/trunk release/windshield wipers/ and top no longer work. Despite the valiant little fuse doing it's job I still managed to fry something electrical in the car (seems like it must be one of the control modules)
Thankfully, the car will still run and can function without the suspected module. So, it won't be out of commission while were waiting for a replacement. (And I sure hope it's that module and not some other problem I'm going to have to hunt down in the 20,000 miles of wiring in the car.)
But, heavens-to-betsy, I KNOW better than to work HOT. I hereby tender my resignation of all my awesomeness credentials. I will now go sit in the corner for the rest of the weekend :dunce: and think about what I did.
