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  #1  
Old 11-13-2012, 02:35 AM
davew833 davew833 is offline
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Location: Salt Lake City, UT
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Ham- fisted idiots...

After a particularly cold, snowy weekend here in Utah I set about to see why the rear defroster grid in my recently acquired '94 was not working. The previous owner had taken it to an independent shop that he'd used regularly for that very reason, they'd charged him $100 to "fix" it (as shown by a service ticket in my possession) and it still didn't work. Huh...

The defroster grid has a "hot" wire that connects to the passenger side of the grid, and a ground that connects to the driver's side. There's also a gray wire that connects to the top of the back glass in the middle that I believe is the FM antenna. The "expert" that tried to fix the defroster had cut the hot and the ground wires from their factory connections (in the trunk) and spliced everything together with the gray wire which was no longer connected to the grid at the top of the back glass and then grounded everything to a screw in the roof structure. There's NO WAY this would have worked-- I don't even see how there was 12v going into the grid! Not only that, but loose wires were sticking out from the side covers around the rear glass and the headliner was hanging down where they'd pulled it down to get to the top connection.

After figuring out how the grid was originally connected by way of my parts car, I rewired everything as it SHOULD be, including soldering the top center connector back to its contact point at the top of the grid. Whaddya know-- the defroster grid works fine! I'm going to have to check the service ticket again, but I bet the "repair" the poor previous owner was charged for was done in the summer when there was no way to check it... Some people should not work on SVX's!
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Last edited by davew833; 11-13-2012 at 09:15 PM.
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  #2  
Old 11-13-2012, 08:41 AM
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dbarnblatt dbarnblatt is offline
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Re: Ham- fisted idiots...

Nice work! I believe the gray wire is the FM antenna lead. I know someone here can confirm.
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  #3  
Old 11-13-2012, 10:42 AM
davew833 davew833 is offline
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Re: Ham- fisted idiots...

I wondered if it might be the FM antenna lead, which makes the whole scenario even funnier! Did the person doing all this even think to use a voltmeter to find out which wires were hot or ground? Geez... this same shop charged the previous owner for a new starter AND alternator to "cure" an intermittent no-start problem that turned out to be a faulty aftermarket security module wired into the ignition switch. I hope they didn't rebuild the transmission, too!
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Old 11-13-2012, 05:41 PM
Tireiron Tireiron is offline
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Location: Methuen, MA
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Re: Ham- fisted idiots...

Yes the 3rd wire is one of the FM antenna wires, there are 2 on the SVX. ! antenna on the glass and the other the power antenna, you only use 1 of them if you replace the radio. The OEM radio was smart enough to decide which antenna had the best reception for the station you were on and took its signal from that one.
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Old 11-13-2012, 10:00 PM
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WYOSVX WYOSVX is offline
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Re: Ham- fisted idiots...

Ham-fisted is a gentle term. Ham-brained, too, I 'd guess.

Took my wife's Outback to a mechanic a few years ago to fix the rear seat sun roof. He tore out some of the plastic ceiling trim and put it back up with sheet metal screws then very-obviously tried to distract me so I wouldn't notice.

What could I do? Just shook my head and never went back. And he didn't fix the sun roof.

I feel your pain!
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