hello, so I washed my car a couple of days ago and forgot that I was working on the IPDM fuse area which had no cover on. The first issue I noticed, was that my headlight and interior lights were constantly on when I turn off my car. The functions of the lights were working which were controllable yet when I put the **** on "Off", it will turn off the light until I take the key out then it would turn back on. This kept draining my battery which led the car to die and the only way to fully turn them off was to pull the 10A tail lamp fuse. Another strange issue was that when I was driving after the car wash, the horn would randomly go off here and there throughout the drive despite it occurring a hand full of times. Car still starts after getting it jumped. Will check if the car is giving out any codes but should I do anything to the IPDM such as pulling out all the fuses and letting it possibly dry? I live in a cold area so its possible that all the moisture/water has frozen by now.

 

I would pull out the IPDM and put it in a bag of rice for a whole day. That will suck out all the moisture from inside. Hopefully that fixes your issues.

 

Exactly what Scorpio said. Take a picture of it first so you know where all the relay/fuses go, FULLY DISASSEMBLE the IPDM down to the printed circuit board, rice bag to suck the water out, you definitely saturated your IPDM without the cover installed while washing.

 

okay I have taken apart the IPDM and placed it in a bag of rice along with the fuses and relays. I did notice moisture on the ipdm as well as on the relays, would it still be okay to reuse the same relays?

 

Yeah they should still be ok as long as the moisture gets sucked out. I dont think the internals will rust that fast.

 

Yeah just reuse it all.

 

Alright I installed my ipdm after replacing with new fuses but kept old relays and my lights turn off again and thankfully they’ve been working properly. The only odd thing that happened was that when i disconnect battery (specifically negative terminal) my headlights started flickering really fast. I did swap my battery because when I was charging it, I happened to over charged it and the battery was slightly swollen. Now my car seems to be running well.

 

I dont understand how your headlights were flickering with the battery disconnected. Hows that possible??

 

I do have a separate battery component for my subwoofer which may have provided them with power. Not sure why it was flickering and I heard them turn on and off. Or the headlights were discharging themselves of the excess electricity.

 

I think you compromised the battery, wouldn't surprise me if it's actually reading at or just under 11 volts with the car turned off. Double check that the voltage is correct (12.5 or so), it's caused by gas buildup (from boiling the electrolytic solution) and hopefully the plates didn't relocate inside the housing. Normally you will have a relocated plate that ends up shorting out one cell on a bulged battery.

The battery is 6 separate 2volt cells, each cell has two polarity of plates separated by a spacer/separator plates. Filled with distilled water (or some solution, it becomes H2SO), and when you have a bulge it's pushing all the polarity and separators together which usually causes a short once it cracks those separator plates.

If you look on the side of the battery you will see imprinted lines running from top to bottom on the long side of the battery, those are the cell dividers, you can count the six cells.

 

Oh yeah I didn’t reuse the battery because I didn’t want to risk anything.