Two days ago I drove to an all-day athletic competition and parked the car. No problems on the drive in.
Six hours later I got back into the car – it was a hot sunny day, so the car was quite hot inside and out, but this wasn’t the first time the car has been parked all day in the sun.
Upon starting and driving the car I noticed two odd symptoms:
The center console was dead. No clock/radio, and no air conditioning.
While the clutch was depressed, and until I released it:
there was a loud and alarming scraping sound. A metal-on-metal kind of sound. Happened both idling and while at speed.
the brake light (?!) went on, and the speedometer would dip down quickly to near-zero, even if I was going at highway speed.
The engine seemed unaffected, and I was able to drive home – about 25 miles of mostly highway driving. I used the clutch as little as possible.
Today – two days later – all symptoms are gone. AC works, clock and radio are back on, and the clutch neither makes the alarming sound, nor has any effect on the brake light or speedometer.
My car is a 1996 Honda Civic hatchback, manual, with about 150,000 miles on it.
Anyone have a clue what happened, or how serious it is?
Sounds like a loose connection - you hit a bump and it is loose and then another bump and it goes back into place. Or maybe an electronic part is dying but it is not quite gone yet.
Punoqllads, that post describes EXACTLY what happened to me; his car was even the same model and year. The fact that he also experienced both the dead electricals AND the wonky clutch noise makes me think they have to be related issues.
Alas that no one ever responded to his post.
Rick, what does it mean when a ground “opens up in the heat?”
Electrical items in any circuit require both a power lead and a ground lead. If one side of the circuit goes open, or has it’s resistance increase enough, things stop working. If only the items on one fuse stopped working it could be a problem on the power or ground side. But since the OP mentioned that more than one fuse was involved, the most likely culprit is a loose ground that has extra resistance when the car is heat soaked. in cars grounds are often ganged with several unrelated circuits grounded at the same point in the car.
Bad grounds can do strange things. for example on one car I know of if you disconnect the headlight ground, the headlight goes dim, and the windshield wipers come on. If you turn on the high beams, on a wagon the rear wiper comes on. Demonic possession you say? No, the ground if feeding back though the windshield washer motors and tickling the wipers into running. Easy if you have a diagram and spend some time reading it.
With a wiring diagram and a exact list of what did not work, I could probably tell you which ground was bad.
I’d suspect something to do with the starter / ignition system. I had a Taurus that did similar things. It was sticking in the start position after the engine started. Does the central console go dead as you start the car normally (power used to turn over engine)? The scraping noise might have been the flywheel grinding against a non retracted starter motor?