A new one! Camry wiring problem (NMC)

Looks like a short in the circuit, maybe? You need to go back over what you did.

Durn, I had better get back out in that nasty 75 degree's of sunshine.

We almost got a Spring here this year. I'm not sure that has ever happened before.

Perfect day for a drive, but I can't drive the Miata until my new Hankook tires show up, so I may as well get some work done before the heat wave arrives.

Sticky performance tires. It has been a while. This will be most excellent.

Thanks, I will go take a look at my mangled wiring job. I hate dealing with electronics. Give me a shock or brake job instead any day. :-)

Pat

Ditto, took advantage of the perfect weather to put the top down and putt to the PO to send the IRA and the Arizona Department of Revenue their pound of flesh.

And I discovered a bug. My top latches don't latch properly, when I want to unlatch the top I don't have to push the little button to unlock the latch which is a bit of a safety hazzard.

For all I know, it's been like this forever, I never tried to open a latch w/o pushing the button before but it looks like I'm off to miata.net to see if I can figure out what the problem might be and how to fix it.

When the latch is closed, I can see a gap between the back of the latch and the little tab on the lock button. The lock button doesn't work with the top released, either.

I sure hope this isn't going to cost me new latches or some such....

Found it!

Any dual filament lamps? Sometimes a filament can break and bridge across to the other filament. Depending on the car, strange electrical things can result.

--Geary

You are correct, there is quite a bit about this on Miata.net My experience with my 99 was that the factory latches supplied on the 99 were defective. Basically, the fault was due to an improperly drilled set of holes that are used to hold a silver shaft. This shaft supports the plastic latch. The second common problem with the latches is that there should be an "overcenter" action that causes the latch to more or less tend to stay closed, instead of opening when it just barely touched or subjected to strong vibration or bumps. This places all the "stay closed" load on the plastic latch when the overcenter action does not function properly.

There are some "fixes" on miata.net that help avoid latch replacement and the resulting cost.

Not mine, they are very tight when latched, they do seem to go substantially over center.

This is my problem:

I may do nothing since the latches seem to have no tendency to unlatch w/o some force being applied.

"The problem now... the reverse light is coming on when I hit the brake. The brake lights still operate properly and the reverse back-up lights do not come on."

perhaps stating the obvious... but it sounds like the backup lights were spliced into the common of the brake lights... follow the leads from the backup lights back to your splice. also, there is a site called toyotanation.com that has an actve user forums that might help, but nothing jumped out about electrical problems with the '94 camry.

ps. great post about the nb manifolds.

Strange results, I fixed one wire, but I think that I broke another one inside the insulation while doing that. The wire pulled apart with only the plastic giving any resistance, it was probably just making contact before I messed with the other part of the wire set.

I finally decided that all of the wiring in that area looked like a problem waiting to happen again, so I chopped out the entire 4-wire set that was under stress from the trunk hinge operation, replaced them with new, longer ones, and everything is back to normal.

Just need to wrap it all back up now.

Thanks all for the help on this aging OTM!

Pat

Hello!

Floating ground? That's the kind of symptom I've had before from a floating ground. See if there is a good electrical connection between the tail-light shell and the chassis.

yrs jp

That was probably it. Once I spliced in new wires that made a solid connection, the problem went away.

This car has served the family well, now it is almost time to belong to another.

This Camry in Dallas, however, rocks!

"This is what you get when you mix some serious damage, someone's aversion to body shops, a lot of wasted time, and the ignorant belief that Bondo and duct tape can fix anything.

This sad-looking fifth-generation Toyota Camry was spotted in Dallas, Texas wearing enough Bondo to make 3M consider expanding instead of downsizing in this tough economy.

Stylists will applaud the effort on maintaining the window line as well as returning a Camry Coupe to Toyota's lineup but surely judges will take points off for the roof bulge. If it can be ignored that it looks like the passenger side has been overrun by some sort of sci-fi mold and oh - it appears that you can't open the right side doors... well, there's not much else left to say about it, is there? Have a look for yourself below"

Pat