Hello,
As my first post on this forum and first e30 i’ll explain my car before the actual problem to have a backstory.
1986 325e swapped with a 1989 325i motor and 5 speed. I just installed a continental radio, but other than that everything is relatively stock and unmolested from what I can tell. The car also has many wires that lead to nothing near the steering column under the dash, a lot just tucked up in there by the previous owner.
The problem: I was driving down the interstate, when the radio shut off, so I turned it back on, thinking I had it up too loud and had a bad ground, I turned it down some and rode for about 5 minutes. Out of nowhere, a huge plume of white smoke starts billowing out from under the dash, so i pull over, shut it off, and hop out. After airing it out, I hop back in and take a look under the dash to find two wires that had shorted out and one had completely stripped itself (melting off all the plastic, I snipped them off since they were never connected to anything). I immediately guessed they were radio wires, but when tracing these wires back they come to a junction box above the dead pedal and I can see there is another section of bare wire, along with a bare wire that jumps 2 pins on the plug. I traced the longer bare wire into the main wiring harness that goes into the firewall, but can’t see behind the brake booster to find out more.
I got the car home, but would love to know if anyone has a wiring diagram for the little white box above the dead pedal so I can know what the wire that burned up is for and why it got hot.
Below I included a very blurry picture of the box where I believe the problem is, I ended up pulling the blue and red wires on the right side of the box, since this is where the bare wires were leading.
Thank you very much in advance, and if I solve the problem in the meantime I’ll be sure to post!
As my first post on this forum and first e30 i’ll explain my car before the actual problem to have a backstory.
1986 325e swapped with a 1989 325i motor and 5 speed. I just installed a continental radio, but other than that everything is relatively stock and unmolested from what I can tell. The car also has many wires that lead to nothing near the steering column under the dash, a lot just tucked up in there by the previous owner.
The problem: I was driving down the interstate, when the radio shut off, so I turned it back on, thinking I had it up too loud and had a bad ground, I turned it down some and rode for about 5 minutes. Out of nowhere, a huge plume of white smoke starts billowing out from under the dash, so i pull over, shut it off, and hop out. After airing it out, I hop back in and take a look under the dash to find two wires that had shorted out and one had completely stripped itself (melting off all the plastic, I snipped them off since they were never connected to anything). I immediately guessed they were radio wires, but when tracing these wires back they come to a junction box above the dead pedal and I can see there is another section of bare wire, along with a bare wire that jumps 2 pins on the plug. I traced the longer bare wire into the main wiring harness that goes into the firewall, but can’t see behind the brake booster to find out more.
I got the car home, but would love to know if anyone has a wiring diagram for the little white box above the dead pedal so I can know what the wire that burned up is for and why it got hot.
Below I included a very blurry picture of the box where I believe the problem is, I ended up pulling the blue and red wires on the right side of the box, since this is where the bare wires were leading.
Thank you very much in advance, and if I solve the problem in the meantime I’ll be sure to post!
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