I know I'm gonna catch some flack for this one...

So after what I thought was a successful hood pin install, I drove home, and upon taking the key out of my ignition the car kept running. After several attempts to get the car to shut off, I finally just had to stall it to get it to shut off, and disconnect the battery to get the panel lights inside to turn off.

After some very quick troubleshooting, I realized I had drilled into my wiring harness a bit. I'm at a loss for what to do. The damaged part is right there by the front of the high pressure A/C valve, so I can't access the break to try to repair it, and taking a look at the cost of a new harness made me want to vomit.

I just got home from a deployment, and was supposed to be driving home to see my family at the end of the week, but this is starting to seem unlikely.

Does any one have any experience with this sort of thing or have any suggestions?

 

Repair, or replace. Regardless the harness will need to come out to gain access to it. Gona be an all day job too. Pics, also check all your fuses to see if something is shorted. Pray that this didnt effect the ECU or PCM as then you will be looking at a hefty repair bill.

On a side note, hoodpins

 

Well I had a buddy who had his hood fly off on the highway, it destroyed his windshield and messed up his roof pretty bad, so with this roadtrip ahead of me I wanted to be safe. Silly me.

 

On a more positive note upon inspection the damage doesn't seem too terribly bad. Nothing seems to actually be severed, I might have just nicked the insulation on a couple ofvthe wires. I have a friend coming by tomorrow to assist with the process. Wish me luck.

 

Thumbs up! I hope you get to see your family, borrow your friends car if you need to!!

 

The fact that the car started up and drove fine before I realized what had happened gives me hope, the only place I hit an issue was when I tried to shut it off, so I think the wire going to the ignition switch just got stripped and is shorting out. I hope that's all. :X

 

Personally sounds like more of an PCM problem than a wiring problem, (i.e the PCM didn't receive and or didn't interpret the ignition off and cut the fuel), that or you have a 12v to ignition2 short somewhere.

 

Yeah. I think it's the latter. Thanks Carbon

 

Alright, So I got to the harness, and I guess I'm incredibly lucky. Nothing's severed, a few things have some insulation stripped off, and only 2 wires are actually significantly damaged. My friend is coming by with a soldering iron today, so I think this should be pretty fixable.

 

Hood pins...those good ol days. Had them on my 74 camaro. Except one thing, my camaro had a fiberglass hood which meant you could not and did not want to use the factory latching mechanism. Well unless you wanted to smash the hood up. The only way to secure the hood was to pin it down.

If your buddy had his hood fly up and it wasnt an aftermarket hood that needed pins then he's a buffoon and probably left his hood unlatched. No amount of hood pins is going to save you if you dont latch or pin the hood down. It's sort of a rice thing to go around with a factory hood...that latches properly...and have hood pins on it. That or you should be speccing some serious HP where you could tweak the body panels and release the hood accidentally, which an rx8 cannot.

Take it as a lesson learned. The car gods frown on rice and they spanked you for it with your harness issues

 

Thanks for the help guys, I got it fixed and the car's running fine. Dodged a bullet there. :D

 

I understand what you mean, nogo, I just wanted to err on the side of caution. It wasn't a looks thing for me. I figured $40 hood pins were a decent price to pay to protect my new CF hood.

As for my buddy, the hood portion of the latch was still in the bottom part when he pulled off. The bolts ripped out of the carbon fiber hood itself. Dunno if that constitutes bufoonery.