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Confused - electrical?

2288 Views 5 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  G_A_B24
I have a '99 that has someting wacky going on. Every once in a while the car shuts off and I have on the message center "Reduced Engine power" followed by "Low Fuel" The first time this happened as I was calling the tow truck I decided to try starting once more, about 15 minutes after I went dead. The car started and went home about 35 miles. Since then it has happened and I replaced the fuel pump micro relay, it was very warm to the touch. I've gone several trips and months with out a problem and now it started doing it again. If I remove the relay and re-insert it again the car starts. But the relay is warm to the touch. All other relays in the box are cool to the touch. And even one time I had the traction control go off at the same time. Does anyone have any suggestions here?
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1rst thing , pull the codes
the electrical gremlins in the C5 will drive you batty.. in case you are not aware, these are the codes and how to pull from DIC.. like Ex said, see what comes up ..current malfunctions are followed by a "C" .. old codes "H" ....http://www.stengel.net/diccodes.htm
I had a similar problem with my GMC truck, the fuel pump relay was very hot to the touch. There were a couple of things I did : Replace the relay which I see you've done already, but mine was still hot to the touch. Next I tinned the terminals on the relay with solder. I did this to try and tighten the connections between relay terminals and the plug/relay socket. Pulling the relay on and off numerous times must have loosened the connections. That helped a lot but it was still hot but not as hot as before. next I tried measuring the amperage draw of the fuel pump, turns out it was over-amping, hence the additional heat generated in the relay. Usually when a pump starts to draw more than its rated amperage, it's on it's way out. Finally ended up replacing the fuel pump in the tank. All is well now. But let me say that the power wiring for these pumps are marginal at best, so if everything is not up to snuff you will have heat issues or problems with the pump.. Good Luck and let us know what you find! :seeya:
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certainly worth a try....it could be a bad ground issue too, these cars are notorious for bad grounds causing all sorts of weird sh&t
Thanks for all this info, I'm going to try some of these things this week and will report back.
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