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.
If the harness is shorted the location of the short cannot be seen from above(intake side of the harness). Assuming you were able to see the wiring was okay you may want to check the wiring at the oxygen sensors. Others have found problems there with the wiring or by disconnecting the sensors to locate a short inside the sensors.
So I was sure that would have been my problem I even took off the intake manifold on my 96 civic Ex to check the wiring correctly, but found nothing wrong with harness. Any other ideas why my fuse #15 fuse keeps blowing. Please help.
Thanks for this information, save time and money with your information, problem with the fuse 15 ( friction bracket problem)
Thank you a trillion times!! this problem happen to me on my 97 civic 2 days ago, did my research and found this page, OMG not enough thanks Sparky and the other people in here, just half an hour and 10 bucks on friction tape an fuses and my car is ok again!! thank you again and keep this tips for us.
I would recommend checking to see what code is keeping the SES light on. It may just be a speed sensor code. I do not know the ELD part number.