Hey guys, I was wondering what the picture below is of? It's an electrical component, and there are two of them, each on the driver/passenger side near the radiator support. Anyone know what these are?

 

That doesn't look like a factory installation , could be a power relay from a light kit from days gone by. Follow the wires back and see if they go to a switch or are plugged into the fuse panel.

 

Horn relay ?

Fog Lights relay ?

 

Looks like this truck used to have fog lights on the bumper, I will follow them all back tomorrow and see where they lead to. I am guessing the empty switches on the dash but ya never know. My gripe with them is that my old mechanic, who I had install an electric fuel pump years ago, used an 87 87a relay for the job, but did a very poor job installing it. I cant go back to him because he isn't at that job anymore. He had the switch signal going to the relay from this device, which I believe is faulty. I Will get this all straightened out tomorrow, for now, it is off to the van halen concert at mohegan sun. Thanks guys, I will let you know how it goes.

P.S.

There is another big issue, as i have a short somewhere, Im thinking these might be part of it too, but the whole truck is a live circut! Touch the test light anywhere on the body and its lit up. I'll let you know what I find.

Keyul

 

That is definitely an old-style relay, looks as though the coil grounds through the casing. Whoever installed it did a hack job. To find out what it does, you'll have to trace the wires as was said before, because it's not a factory installation so none of us will be able to tell you what it does based on what it looks like.

Where is the other end of your test light when you do this? All the sheetmetal on the truck is grounded. If you have your testilght hooked to the positive terminal of the battery and you touch anywhere on the body (unpainted) it will light up. Unless that is not what you are doing in which case you will need to elaborate more.

 

No, its grounded to the negative terminal of the battery when I'm doing this. I had no idea that those were relays before, they are a little beyond the style I am used to (I'm only 20!) Van Halen concert was postponed until may 20th, didn't find that out until I got to the arena, so I will go outside and mess around some more.

 

Okay, I went back outside and looked through a bit better without being in a rush for this postponed concert. Here's what I found.

The relays are bad, They are letting power through them constantly, and you can see in the picture above, the relay that the mechanic put in a few years ago, gets its signal from those relays. So it has been draining the battery. I am going to remove the relays and all of their wiring tomorrow and get this signal wire for the fuel pump relay hooked into a proper location.

As for the truck being live, I think I have some critters in there somewhere, I checked the bait block that I put out and it is nearly gone, I'll look for damage tomorrow. Atleast now I can get this thing back on track.

I will bring the truck into work one day, I'll rewire the pump and relay properly. All we do at work is automotive electrical (I work for whelen engineering). I'll tell ya though, the installation my old mechanic did, is hacked to hell. If I sent anything out the door looking like he did, I would be for sure getting a pink slip. Heck, my boss at work says that if he ever catches us using a scotchlok, he will fire us on the spot. Thanks for the quick identification fellas, I was pressed for time there, but now I can re-do it properly.

Keyul