Wiring Issue? Some acc. Stuck on

[Itsuki Takeuchi]

92 Hatch. S14 KA swapped.

Issue:
My cigarette/charger and brake light stays on. And i can hear somthing under the dash making a humming

How it happened:
Drift Day this last Saturday, ran about 4 laps in a row and stopped to check my tire wear. Came back to my seat and saw smoke coming from the ash tray area. The ebrake wire had got so hot it melted its coating. In a panic of the car burning down I ripped the wire off. Curious to what was going on I tried grounding the wire (ebrake wire) to see if the brake light would go off. it sparked! Is it suppost to be a hot wire? Also noticed my cigarette(phone charger light) was staying on. This is with the key off and out of the ignition. If i remove the battery cable off the terminal and put right back on it turns it off and does not come back on till i turn the key on again.

What can cause this? I need to start tracing wires to see if its touching another (hot) wire? i thought ebrake wire was a ground.

Any help is appreciated.

[Itsuki Takeuchi]

okay. still havent got to trace the wiring yet. im currently working on the engine at the moment. but

i noticed that all accessories stay on. i dont have a radio so it wasnt that obvious until the other day it was raining. after i shut the car off the wiper continued to move.

so wipers,brake light on dash,and cigerette charger all stays on after key is turned off. all i do is wiggle my battery terminal to shut it off. and it stays off until i turn the car on again.

battery terminal loosened in order to take off. i dont take it off anymore, left it loose so all i have to do is wiggle it

[KAHNKLINGONME]

Bump similar issue. Did you find a solution. All stock

[lok]

Sounds like you rubbed through the harness in the fender on the driver's side.

If your harness was smoking as bad as you say, it's probably gonna need to be replaced.

Once it gets that hot, it's melts together like string cheese.

[kennn]

Other than the fender harness being eaten up by the wheel (which is a catastrophic short), I've seen cars do this when there is incorrect wiring in the ECU connector.

The S14 engine harness has the big F4 plug, and if it's not exactly right it can backfeed current into the ground wire, leading to the problem you described. The relays are getting "dirty" current, which can cause the humming. Also diodes don't like to be backfed and can make similar buzzing sounds.

You're better off running a 91-94 KA engine harness and 91 ECU, and leaving out all the unnecessary S14 sensors.

[LoSt180]

I'm running into a very similar issue right now in my daughter's S13.

Turn off ignition and the car would basically still stay on. Unplug the battery, everything off until it was turned on again. After digging into the FSM wiring diagrams, it turns out if power is being back fed into the "bulb check" relay it would actually keep the ACC relays energized. I tried removing the "ENG CONT" fuse from the engine bay, and the car would indeed shut off, but then we had a loud buzzing sound behind the dash with the charge and brake lights lit up. Car didn't like that fuse being removed.

I replaced the relay and no change. Yanked out the bulb check relay and car started acting normal.

Now, there is a parasitic battery drain and I've isolated it to the large 75A fusible link. Making me think it was the alternator all along. Issue is that the alt in the car is fairly new, but I went ahead and swapped it out with a spare and still have the same issue.

Ordered a rebuild alternator off rock auto and will see if that fixes the issue. Right now my daughter has to pull the 75A link when she parks to avoid having a dead battery.

[LoSt180]

Found my issue in case someone comes across this thread later. Turns out the Wiring Specialties trans harness had the wires flipped going into the alternator. Wasted money on a new alternator, dug out the old harness from a box to compare.