This 1996 Honda Civic came in with a complaint of the battery going dead. I checked and sure enough it was not charging and based on experience I checked to see if the speedometer was working. It was not. Knowing that this is a common fault with Civics, I checked to see if fuse #15 was blown in the interior fuse box and it was. Time to rack the car up. The following pictures are from underneath the car looking up past the driver’s side half shaft assembly.
The wires above the bracket that braces the intake to the block commonly rub through the insulation until a short circuit is made.
The bracket is easy to remove, just two bolts.
If you will double click on the following picture you can see where the Black/Yellow wire is melted.
This picture shows where the wire has shorted out against the bracket and left a rusty arc mark.
If you double click on the following picture you can see the bare copper wire exposed on the Black/Yellow wire. I took a short piece of electrical tape and wrapped it around the one wire.
Then I wrapped the harness with friction tape.
I also wrapped the bracket with friction tape. I installed the bracket and a new wire tie for the harness attached to it. Replaced the fuse and checked the system. All okay.
Update: Although the harness rubbing on the bracket in this article is a very common problem on these vehicles, there have been several reports in the comments that Civic owners are finding shorted oxygen sensors as another cause of fuse #15 blowing. So you may want to check the wiring around the oxygen sensors to make sure they are not shorting out on the exhaust. If no problem is found there disconnect the oxygen sensor wiring to see if the short will go away.
Very curious on this issue, 96 dx civic coupe Speedo is not working and check engine light on. Cant get it on ramps at the moment to check the issue with the vss wires, however fuse 15 is not Blown. What possible issues could it be in regards to this. Noticed that the ELD in the dx coupe is different to 38255-s5a-003 alot bigger and different shape on the DX coupe. Any other possible part number for this? Thanks in advance. Adam
Thank you for the post I was able to get my speedometer working again and the bad Idling to normal with this one fuse..
Replacing the burnt wires one at a time and relocating the fuse to an external in line fuse holder is about all you can do. Unless you buy and install complete wiring harnesses. Apparently someone used something other than the correct fuse in the car’s history.
what if my blown 15 fuse melted the fuse socket and from the exact location under intake manifold on c115 the alt wire destroyed several other wires leading to the under dash fuse/relay box connectors? I have tried to pin point using diagrams to locate the other wires that were damaged as well but cant seem to identify them to their component. I cut all the wires leading to driver side engine harness c101 that leads thru firewall under dash. I am splicing these wires to reconnect with connectors under dash. Is this okay
Thanks so much for taking the time to post this. Using this article and the Honda Service bulletin http://www.tegger.com/hondafaq/tsb/civic/x99-029e.pdf I was able to repair my daughters ’96 Honda Civic today. It was showing codes P1298, P0500, P0135 and P0141 as others have reported. Once I removed the intake manifold bracket, the exposed wire was clearly visible as was the arcing you showed in the pictures. BTW – I used “liquid electrical tape” http://www.amazon.com/Star-brite-Liquid-Electrical-Tape/dp/B0000AXNOD to fix the exposed wire. It was easier than wrapping tape. I covered the harness with corrugated tubing. One note – after I did the repair, the problem remained (no speedometer reading, check engine light on, pulsing electrical, etc), but I had forgotten to replace the number 15 fuse. Once I did that, things cleared up and all was back to normal. For others who may try this, the intake manifold bracket is located well up inside the engine compartment. Without a lift, it hard to work on. I got the car up on jacks and was able to get in there by needed a pretty long It takes a long extension (or several shorter ones snapped together) to reach the higher bolt as noted by Russ above.