New to me 1989 240 DL
 

So I picked up a '89 240 DL 5 speed wagon last night and it has some issues.

The biggest issue is that the previous owner wired up the brake lights independently with their own fuse block, which works, but everytime I press the brakes the "bulb failure" light pops up on the dash, and all of the wiring looks terrible. I was told that the previous owner did this because the brake lights stopped working even after the switch was replaced.

Another really big issue (maybe this is actually the biggest) is that all of the instrument cluster lights stay on all the time (lights off, car off, etc.) And it drains the battery unless I turn the dimmer all the way down, it still drains the battery but not as fast.

Also the passenger side window goes down, but then will not go back up. I used a multimeter and when going down there's power to the motor but going up there isn't any power.

The windshield wiper on low speed only works if you hold pressure on the stalk.

The rear window wiper doesn't work at all, I haven't probed it yet though, so I don't know where the break in the power is.

The blower fan never goes all the way off, it just stays constantly blowing.

The drivers side front marker light stays on all the time when the vehicle is running.

The front driver's side door handle doesn't sit flush.

The gas lid doesn't sit flush or line up with the hole.

The gear shifter is very very loose feeling.

It's running really rich too, I'm not sure exactly why, but I plugged a couple vacuum lines that went to the charcoal canister. The previous owner thought it was a bad maf?

When I'm in the throttle and accelerating, and I take my foot off the accelerator too fast it bucks forward, bad trans mount?

I think a lot of the issues are from bad grounds/connections, I'll try to work on cleaning grounds tomorrow, but any advice and help would be greatly appreciated!

what do you want us to say? the car sounds like its been butchered.

Molested!

Well it sounds like you are in for an adventure. Just start to fix 1 issue at a time. Prioritize them and start to work them out. I would 1st fix the dash light issue. Sounds like the + positive feed is not attached to the ignition on fuse. Being this is a battery drainer you need to sort this out first. Then I would sort out the brake light circuit and bring the wiring back to OEM and start there.

Well I say the wiring looks terrible, I was being a bit dramatic, really the only thing that's been changed is the wiring for the brake lights, and it just looks terrible really bc the oem fuse box is just dangling there, it's not bolted up. That's what makes it look bad. None of the original wires are cut so it's actually just more of an eye sore than anything else. I planned on changing everything back to stock today and bypassing the bulb failure relay, bc I'm pretty sure that why the brake lights stopped working to begin with. As far as changing everything back to stock in the fuse box goes, is there a diagram that I can follow to make sure everything goes back to the right place? I downloaded a couple pictures last night, but I'm not sure they'll be enough to get everything perfect. I'll take some pictures here in a bit to show y'all what I'm working with.

Alright, so I changed everything back to factory in the fuse box, found out there were multiple wires in the wrong place, cleaned all of the fuse connections, replaced any old looking fuse, bypassed the bulb failure relay by soldering the right connections inside the relay bc I really didn't want to cut the factory harness. Now my brake lights with as they should, the front marker light doesn't stay on when it's running, the dash lights don't appear to stay on all the time, it's light outside though so I won't know for sure until it gets dark. The blower fan actually turns all of the way off instead of staying on slow speed now too. So that just fixed most of my electric Gremlins!!! 😁😁

Edit: The fan blower motor still blows at a very low speed, what would be a fix for this or is that normal for these cars? This is my first 240 btw.

The fan will not completely shut off if the air conditioner is on.