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.
I have the same prob all lights flicker. Check the wires no wires damage. But rapped. Them any way but still have the prob but I have à 2000 civic ex and thought that prob was only on 96 to 98. So please any help would be very appreciate and I only have one code it’s my o2 sencor but I replaced. And light came back on with same code. Please someone help
had the problem, located the short, but there are two shorts there, one wire is completely burnt in two. hopefully a butt connector will work.
Hi:
i have a 99 Si.
After a recent storm the speedo stopped working and shortly after the car died on the highway….They towed the car to a “mechanic” who fitted a new alternator and all seemed good.
Then last week it happened again in the rain. This time i got the car home before the battery died. I found fuse #15 blown.
The b16 series engine in the si has two test connectors below the inlet manifold with a bunch of wires. One wire was rubbing on the bracket securing the blue connector. Sure enough it was shorting out. some tape cured it.
Not quite the same as this post but thanks for showing me the places to look. Hope this helps someone else.
this post was a godsend Thank you
I had the same issue with the fuse blowing on a customer’s 2000 Civic. Seems that they’ve already done an update at that time and there is a stronger sleeve around it, however it was also wearing a bit and so I wrapped it with corrugated sleeve, though there was no wire that wore through. Spent another hour and a half looking for other shorts in the car only to be lead to a worn through secondary O2 sensor wire that was rubbing against the head shield. Wrapped that up also with electrical tape and corrugated plastic. Going for a test drive now to see if it fixes the problem for sure.
*Note: There were some other modifications done on this car prior, such as an exhaust and intake. I assume that the PO/mechanic changed the O2 sensor possibly because it was bad, but did not make sure it was secured correctly.