Yesterday my friend calls me up saying his drivers door no longer pop open. We shaved his door handles about 6 months ago. I at first thought it would be a bad actuator since they go out all the time. Well, it turned out to be the relay. It made this wierd buzzing sound. So I grabbed a brand new relay and replaced it. It still does it. Since the passenger relay worked fine, I switched the wires to it and it worked no problem. The only difference is that the coil on the relay was wired different. On the passenger relay I wired constant to 86 (could be opposite), and hooked up the negative trigger from the alarm to 85. But on the drivers relay, those were switched. So I switched them on the drivers relay and it works fine. So now it works fine, but I am still a little confused. So for the last 6 months it worked fine, but recently it decided that the coil has to be polar. BTW, they are bosche style relays. Is everyone else as confused as I am?
I see relays do crazy things all the time. 2 things that are most typical of a buzzing relay (the coil is cycleing on and off opening and closing the switch) are poor contacts/wires externally, or a poor ground. My assumption is that both relays are seeing the same ground (as I assume they are ground switched, correct?) so we can eliminate that. So let's look further up the line at what you did. How are your connections made at the relay? I assume insulated female spade terminals, with a wireless solder connection correct? I'll bet it was not the switching of the terminals that did it, but the tugging on the loose wires. Try to put new terminals on the end, fill them with di-electric grease, insert the wire into the grease filled end (if you can, double the wire over for a tighter fit) then crimp them very well.
The alarm supplies a switched ground for it's outputs. So I supply constant to the other side. I used insulated female spade terminals crimped onto the wire. I usually reserve taking the time to solder things for my car. :unsure: Usually when I wire relays like this, I tape them together. I know that each needs one side of the coil to have constant 12 volts, so I crimp on a red jumper between the two, using the terminals that are closest together. I also know that terminal 87 on each needs constant power, so I run a jumper to that as well (crimping two wires to one connecter when needed). Then I run one wire to a constant under the dash. So one has power to 85, and one has power to 86, and each has power to 87. But for some reason I had to switch them both to either 85 or 86, I can't remember which. <!--QuoteBegin-sandt38@Sep 21 2003, 12:44 AM I'll bet it was not the switching of the terminals that did it, but the tugging on the loose wires. Try to put new terminals on the end, fill them with di-electric grease, insert the wire into the grease filled end (if you can, double the wire over for a tighter fit) then crimp them very well. [/quote] I didn't do a commentary on the whole process of me figuring out what was going on to keep my explanation short. But I did quite a bit of taking them off, and putting them on throughout my troubleshooting process. But when I pull them off, I usually use dykes and pry up on the bottom of the connector (the Dykes used as a lever), instead of pulling on the wire. It works fine now. In fact I was using the door lock output for the drivers side, and it's only extra output for the passenger door. He was getting annoyed at his door popping every time he turned off the car, so I switched the drivers door to the extra output, and wired a switch for his passenger door. It actually works out better for him. But I'm still confused.
Interestingly, I have a relay installed in my engine, related to my Jackson Racing supercharger kit that I recently installed in my Civic... It wires in-line with an intake-air temperature sensor, and what it does (if I remember right at this point) is trick the car's computer into thinking the engine is running too lean, and ups the fuel a bit... it must be a fairly fast sensor, because it's only supposed to detect and compensate for this when the boost is on, and this supercharger has a nifty bypass valve that only routes air through the supercharger unit on wide-open-throttle. I installed this damn thing myself, and still wouldn't have it running right if it weren't for Sandt38, who helped me diagnose the source of my rough/low idle (I made my own intake gasket, and blocked off a necessary port ). But in the course of troubleshooting, one symptom was a surging idle... and a surging idle can happen when this temperature sensor goes bad, so I was really thinking that was the cause - since I had to cut the wiring and get this relay in-line and all... Anyway.... The only reason I mention all this is because every so often, when I'm really beating on the car usually, actually... Every so often, when I get to the next stoplight, either my idle won't drop below 2K, or it'll surge slightly, centered around 1K. While I suspect this very well could be natural, since the intake air might have just gotten so hot in there, it's just not dissipating quickly, or the sensor is still reporting "hot hot hot!", another thought was that it's this relay - a Bosch-type, generic cheapo - might be bad, or getting stuck... I'm curious if I replace it with a good relay (I have a nice DEI one here somewhere, actually...) if it'll be the same still. Relays are mechanical devices after all... You want 100%, go figure out a transistor circuit!
Actually, that's not too hard. Once you apply more than .7 volts to the base of a transistor, it will allow current to flow through the collector and emitter.
