Is it possible for a fuse to look like this but still not be functional? I crossed my positive/negative terminals when jumping the car and now the transmission won't work. I checked all the fuses with a multimeter and like 12 of them had a 0 reading. But when I checked them visually all of the fuses look to be fine (the V in the middle is still connected). Could it be another issue? Should I even bother getting new fuses and checking if that works?
>12 of them had a 0 reading
0 what? Ohms? That's good.
0 volts? Between what and what? That might be OK as well.
Also look for fusible links.
0 volts between both sides.
Goes into first and reverse manually (shifts very hard) but won't rev or switch to any other gears. It may be just the gas pedal not working come to think of it, as it needs to be going fast enough for it to switch gears in the first place.
I'll try unhooking it. I don't have a code reader unfortunately but can get one.
>0 volts
Yeah that’s not how you test fuses with a multimeter, you shouldn’t have any voltage by touching both sides of the same fuse.
Test Continuity or resistance, but it sounds like you have a bit of a learning curve about how voltage works and what it means.
You should have zero volts across a good fuse. Check ohms, should be at or near zero.
I tested my fuses and all of them are generating like 20 volts, what do?
what kind of meth you been smoking?
>0 volts between both sides.
Yes. How about both sides to the natural terminal or an earthed pannel?
FFS you guys are posting on DA. Electrics 101 - you test any fuse by using the continuity setting on your multimeter - that's the one with the "sound" symbol that beeps when you touch the probes together and you get full deflection on the meter.
How to:
1. Turn on multimeter
2. Set to "Continuity
3. Touch probes as a check - full scale deflection and meter should beep
4. If 3 is OK, touch probes to suspect fuse, one probe on each fuse contact
5. Beep and FSD? Fuse is good. No noise and no meter deflection? Fuse is bad
6. If fuse is bad, recheck meter by repeating (3) above.
7. Rinse and repeat on all fuses.
Yes dude, that was posted wayyyyy earlier in the thread as we explained that OP should not be testing for voltage. I know you’re the smartest person in the whole world, but see
and a bunch of other posts of anons explaining to OP how to use the multimeter about 12hrs ago.
Pic related looks cool too. I know there’s a little 3pc set of these dummy fuses or these dummy ones with a wire loop loop so you can use a clamp meter or the amps function of a regular multimeter and reliably see how current is flowing through the fuse.
So many things I want to buy but hard to justify the cost since I only do this shit on weekends.
Except you're dealing with a guy who doesn't know how to use a multimeter - so I gave an idiot's guide. Glad you read it
Which is exactly what was posted many times earlier, including pics on how to use it. Plus OP’s meter doesn’t even have a continuity beeper.
So you came a day late as the smartest guy on the internet and repeated stuff that was already posted numerous times. Good job being the smartest guy on DA and saving this thread from all of the simple folk.
Some good rainbow on there for Pride Month
>Plus OP’s meter doesn’t even have a continuity beeper.
it should, his meter has a diode tester and that pulls double duty as continuity on most cheap meters.
Ohmmeter is basically the same as well, but no beep like the actual continuity feature that OP did not have… which was explained by anons yesterday before the smartest guy on the internet showed up and quoted a bunch of random posts and explained how we were all wrong and then repeated shit that would be irrelevant had he read a couple posts earlier in the thread.
Frick off kevo. Seems you're a bit salty that he gave better info in 1 reply than you did in 14.
Nah dude, he said this
except I even included pics for OP
Anon came in a day late thinking he was special since he’s the smartest person on the internet.
And here’s OP figuring it out just fine with the advice of me and other anon or two who know how to test fuses properly with a multimeter despite not being the smatrtest guys on the internet
You seem upset Kevin. You can talk to us about it we are all your friends here. Has the bad man been touching you again?
>full deflection
Thanks for the tip grandpa.
Kek
He is the smartest guy on the internet. Even though he was a day late, don’t make fun of him.
>now the transmission won't work
It won't go into 1st gear now?
Almost certainly not a fuse problem. Something is fricked in the transmission computer or one of its sensors. You can try unhooking the battery for like 10 minutes and see if the "hard reset" fixes something by chance. If that still doesn't work you're going to need to hook up a scan tool that can read transmission codes. The codes should give you a pretty big clue on what is going wrong.
Oh no you didn't defrickulate the gear modulator did you?
I think I dejaculated the pedal pusher actually.
If your not getting power to the fuses it's not a bad fuse. You would only be getting power to one side of it if that were the case.
>crossed my positive/negative terminals when jumping the car
Depending on the car that's a fricking rip, i really hope it's not a german car they have no tolerance for that kind of dumbassery.
It's a Toyota Rav4. How do I check only one side? I'm not really sure how to use this thing. My dad just dropped it off and said fix the car you broke dumbass.
See if the multimeter has the little ~~* sound looking feature. Go to that, touch the two probes together and they should beep when they touch if you’re set on the right one.
Now you can test fuses. This is “continuity”, it’s checking that electricity can flow from one side of the fuse to the other.
This is the quickest way to test a bunch of fuses. Got one of these cheapie fuse pullers with a test light on it in a overpriced pack of fuses from a gas station years ago and still keep it in my box since its spaced for both fuse sizes and its just fricking nice
>~~*
Sir, that's the israelite detector.
Otherwise the “Ohm” or “Resistance” test should do about the same thing, if it reads basically zero, you have continuity. So touch both sides of the fuse, black on one and red on the other, and you should get ~0.00 ohm if the fuse isn’t blown.
Also look for the main big fuses and check those out, not just the little blade ones.
I think I did it right. Seems like only 4 are blown. When I touch it to one side, of the 4 I think are blown, it stays at the OL reading. When I touch it to a presumably good one it goes to 0.00 or 0.04
I'm not even sure how to get to the big ones but I'll figure it out. There's nothing under the steering column like in my last car which had more fuses there.
Pic related. This is the old POS I'm working with and it's from a place that doesn't even exist anymore.
Turn the dial up one click, that's for testing continuity. touch both probes to each end of the fuse and listen for a beep, if you do the fuse is good.
The ohm tester is cool. You can always test it by touching the leads together and you should get nearly 0.00 ohms. And if you put the probes on both sides of the fuse, it should be similar if the fuse is good. Pic related shows a good fuze.
If you have good contact with the fuse and get a super high number or “OL”, fuse is probably blown.
Take pic of some of the 4 fuses pulled out, most of them should be physically burnt up if they’re bad.
None of the fuses appear to be blown, but I've found at least two other people who've crossed the leads while jumping and they had the same exact problem (limp mode seems to be what it is). One guy only had to replace one fuse, but it was visibly broken. None of mine appear to be broken, they look just like the pic in OP, but 4 are giving me an OL reading.
It's a 2013 Rav4. Yeah it's strange, everything else works except it shifts hard and the gas pedal doesn't work. It will roll forward in first and reverse just fine. There's also an AWD light, traction control off light, and the engine light. But the fuses for the sensors that check those systems might just be blown.
I would try using a code reader and checking the codes, clearing them might help.
Problem is those trans codes and traction control lights aren’t really connected to the shit a basic <$50 scan tool can deal with. The basic OBD2 scanners only really access the CEL and a bunch of engine codes and emissions bullshit, and “clear codes” on one of those scanners will only clear the “check engine” light. I have to go into a whole different program on this scan tool to deal with those codes
Everyone on those videos & posts I've found also said the warning lights went away after a few miles of driving so I'll try that first if I can get it to run properly.
Depends on the scantool, elm327's can't do shit. But something based on an stn chip like an obd link lx/mx can read and clear abs/airbag/trans module codes.
How long did you unplug the battery for?
Those are sort of the signs of a battery being disconnected and sending everything into re-learn mode, the throttle pedal sounds odd but that could be the car forgetting the throttle position or something.
If you only unplugged the battery shortly when you tried to reset it, you could try unplugging it for like 20-30min. That shit with the hard shifts and ABS and TC lights on, those will pop up in more modern cars when there are electrical issues or the battery is unplugged, and they often go away after a couple miles of driving.
Also you can look at the owner’s manual and figure out what slots the “OL” fuses were in. There’s a possibility you just got a bad reading because of corrosion. See if it makes sense. Like if you’re getting “OL” on the fuse for the radio circuit but the radio still works fine, it’s probably a bad reading.
If it were me, I would unplug the battery at least 20min if you haven’t done that yet, then reconnect it. If that doesn’t solve the issue, then run the car for 20min or cruise it around the block for 15min if you’re able to, see if some of that shit resets as the car is driven.
I get the hard shifts the first ~30mi after unplugging the battery in my car, and the wife’s car gets tons of TC type lights on the dash when that battery gets disconnected
I only unplugged it for like 8 mins. Seeing as I can't get any fuses until tomorrow I'll try longer. I was able to find a few forum posts and videos of people who did the same thing in the same model year car as mine and they all fixed it by swapping the blown fuses, but I was confused because none of mine look blown.
Toyota might give you a couple extra fuses in there. If picrel is correct…
Also these little ones are fine. I carry one in my work backpack. You don’t need a complicated one for testing 12VDC stuff like cars and the red one I’m posting pics of was $7 on clearance from Walmart.
What year is your Rav4 btw? Maybe some anon can find a fuse box diagram. I have heard of people blowing the big fuses like the 80 and 125 in picrel when they try to jump it with the opposite polarity, but my guess is the car would have more ded accessories if you blew one of those big guys. Never had those blow on me personally so idk what they even cover.
touch the black probe to a ground like the door latch and the positive to either side of the fuse. This will tell you if the fuse is getting power and if power is traveling through the fuse.
This is going to confuse Opie more. Not all fuses are going to be powered all the time and sometimes it’s hard to get a good ground if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
OP shouldn’t be testing for voltage if he’s looking for blown fuses, he should be testing resistance or continuity.
Testing for voltage at the fuses will tell you if you have a blown relay or fuseable link, both of which can happen if you cross jumper cables. But yeah I'm kind of jumping the gun there.
Sounds like limp mode. Disconnecting the battery for a few minutes is a good first thing to try. After that Google search for your car and limp mode, see if it's common. There will usually be a way to force it to get out, such as turning the key in a certain sequence.
Disconnected the battery and that didn't work, stayed in the same state. I'll look up limp mode.
Yes. I spent an entire afternoon in a state of complete confusion because the fuses tested at damn near 0 ohms on the multimeter and worked sometimes but then acted as if it was blown when put under enough load to run the wipers.
Eventually I started just juggling fuses and it turned out some of them acted the same way and others worked perfectly. In a state of anger and consternation, I tested my bag of spare fuses under load and there was an approximately 50% failure rate even though all of them passed a basic continutity check. I blame chinesium. I threw them all out and bought new ones and haven't had a problem since.
>Is it possible for a fuse to look like this but still not be functional?
Yes. the fuse leads corrode and will act like a blown fuse but pass a continuity test if youre testing them on their probe slots. you can shine them up on a piece of fine grit sand paper. same for cleaning your battery terminals or terminals like grounds,starter terminals etc..
They were unused. It's obviously a front line thing to shine up the contacts. It was some sort of bizarre manufacturing defect I've never thought of nor encountered before.
This is when chasing down electrical gremlins become super fricking annoying. Resistance goes up with load and there’s such a small amount of power going through the circuit testing with an alternator.
I guess that’s actually where you could start testing for voltage on the fuses. I think you would get a voltage reading from the meter because the resistance in the fuses means the voltage going in will be higher than the voltage going out, like if you have 14V on one side of the fuse and 8V after, you would get a 6V reading on the meter by touching both sides of the fuse because it’s only measuring the difference in potential between the two probes.
There are some cool test setups you can buy for fuses and relays, they’re not cheap but I debate spending the ~$150 on a Lisle kit just because it looks like it would clarify some electrical troubleshooting and if it keeps you from throwing unnecessary parts at the car just once, maybe it’s worth the cost.
Now you have me wondering what I used as a dummy load to test them, since I did it at the car rather than bringing them inside. Maybe headlights?
I only retested a few of them inside to make sure I wasn't going crazy, but it was something quick and crude like maybe using different speed settings on a box fan to find out if they reliably gave out as I dialed up the speed.
Yeah. The fuse has heated, indicated by the heat marks on both pins. The contact between the fuse box and that fuse is bad. Tighten the pins on the fuse box end a bit and install a new fuse.
Then see if the problem continues
Test fuses with a multimeter.
>and now the transmission won't work
Get a car that doesn't need fuses to shift gears.
OP here, fixed the problem. It was indeed a blown fuse that regulated acceleration. Only that one was blown and it was obviously blown, the two sides were completely separated. Not sure why I didn't notice it before, and I'm pretty sure I still don't know how to use a multimeter because it said multiple ones weren't working, but it was just that single one that was blown. The engine, AWD, and traction control warning lights are still on but a few people on forums have said they go away within a few miles of driving, so I'll have to try that or clear them out manually.
After a couple miles of driving, turned it off then on again, and everything is fixed it seems. Just blew that one sneaky fuse, and left some burn marks around my battery's positive node. Be careful if jumping your car when tired as shit, bros.
Well done OP. This guy
gave reasonable instructions, even if he was a bit snarky at the start. If you don't have a multimeter with the continuity setting then you should get one - seriously. It is the setting I use 90% of the time, followed by the voltage to see if I have supply. I have almost never used the resistance (ohms) or current (amps) settings.
Stating the blindingly obvious, you can only continuity test fuses with them removed from the fuse holder; if you try to test them when they're plugged in then you could be testing parts of the circuit as well, which is a different thing.
As far as I know Rav4s have a weird mega fuse thing built into one of the battery cable ends.
Sounds like a main fusible link, i.e. a short undersized piece of wiring that's meant to burn itself out before anything more important, but short enough that the higher resistance doesn't matter compared to all the rest of the wiring. These are usually located in or near the underhood fuse/distribution block, but I can see how it would would simplfy things and reduce costs to just put one right at the battery post.
Fun fact once time I had to hire an actual licenced electrition to redo everthing from the service drop to the distribution panel, and we got to talking afterward
>hey so uh, it looks like everything is just a straight run from the tansformer right to the box
yeah
>so there isn't even a fusible link?
>anyboty could short out the feed inside his house and start a fire and it might just blow out the whole street
yeah
>so I might as well throw a coat hanger at the power lines for all the power company cares?
well, yeah