Category Archives: car repair

1998 Mitsubishi Mirage
Stopped while driving, no start

Car is a 1998 Mitsubishi Mirage LS.

Driving down the highway the engine just died. After stopping in a safe place the car would not start. I had it towed back home, away from the noise of the highway and noticed that it did sound good when I tried to start it.

We thought that maybe fuel did not get to the engine, looked for a kill switch that might have tripped and looked at the electrical diagram for the fuel delivery and electrical system.

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We were able to confirm that the fuel pump worked by connecting connector A-53 directly to +12V and hear it start.

Next we turned our focus to the MFI (Mutiport Fuel Injection) system. Here is the electrical diagram.

elect_mfi

Starting at the top we checked for Fusible Link #7 and found that it was opened. We replaced the fusible link and the car started. So we had found the problem but not its cause, something made that fusible link melt.

Since fusible link #7 deals with injectors and a few other sensors I decided to look around the wiring harness in the engine that were going to the fuel injectors and noticed that one of the wiring harness was rubbing against the engine lift bracket to the point that it had puncture the plastic protection.

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See close up:

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Jiggling the wiring harness produced a few sparks (shorted to ground).

The culprit was found and repaired.

1995 Ford Taurus
Trunk release not working

The problem is that pulling the trunk release lever does not open the trunk. The lever will move up a little bit and then it stops and you can feel resistance to any more movement.

This is what it looks like…

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First we pull up some of the carpet to remove two bolts:

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I then realized that I did not need to remove the mechanism, so bolts went back in.

The problem was that the lock mechanism was broken and the lock latch was closed, preventing the lever from moving up. Since we never use the lock, I did not care to replace or fix it.

Use a zip-tie to keep the latch open:

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Close up view:

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Then put a new handle to replace the broken one and the repair is done.

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