So I was driving my 240 on Monday and got caught in the torrential downpour we had over here. My car was getting all fogged up so I put my rear defroster and rear wiper on. I didn't remember if my defroster worked and I knew my wiper never did but I tried them any way. I parked the car and smelled a burning smell but thought it was a jump box I had in the back of my car. I came back out about 10 minutes later to the inside of my car being completely filled with smoke. I opened my hatch to find the melted mess that you see below.

I'm trying to figure out what to do to track down what happened. The only things that I didn't out of the norm were the defroster and wiper. While I was looking around a few minutes ago I checked the fuses for them both and found that the one for the rear defroster actually has a melt mark on the top of it. At the least I know I need to replace the sub-harness for the hatch and the section of the main harness that runs through the trunk.

 

I didn't have a chance to look around any more over the weekend due to the horrible heat on Saturday so I went out today after work. I ripped apart the plastic panels so I could follow the wire with the melted insulation and found what is in the picture below. You can see in the 3rd picture that there is an inline wire tap(can't remember what they're called) that wasn't tapped to any other wire and was left open. In the last picture there is also a different kind of wire tap but I don't know what wires are tapped since they're completely fried.

 

My guess is that your wiper amp was bad and ****ed some **** up. I know someone that the exact same thing happened to.

 

I'd have to double check the fuses but the rear wiper fuse seemed fine. The rear defrost fuse was melted as you can see in the picture I posted above. With everything being melted like that it's hard to tell exactly what is the cause of this mess. The source seemed to be below where the box in the 3rd picture in my original post was. I'm not sure what exactly that is but it obviously connects to the defroster.

 

well... with the wires melting like that, I am surprised a bunch of fuses didnt blow. Just because one fuse blew, it doesnt necessarily mean that is the source of your problem. Fuses are there to prevent that from happening. I had to rewire someone's body harness cause the rear wiper didnt work and they decided to try it and that was the same result.

 

How would I go about testing it? I have directions for testing if it's working or not but how would I be able to find out if that caused all this?

 

it looks like your wires are wrapped in burnt marshmellow. MMMMMMM marshmellows.... makes me glad i don't have a wiper on the back. one less sh!tstorm i have to worry about. buildin my poor man POS.

 

So I picked up an entire wiring harness over the weekend and I'm leaning towards just replacing the entire current harness because of the wiring cluster-F that it seems to be. The harness I have was cut off at the back of the fuse box. I noticed that a few wires have the exact same patterns. Would that mean that those wires are interchangeable or does it mean it's going to be more of a pain since I'll have to track down exactly where they go?

 

many wires do branch off the same fused wire, if that's what you're asking.

 

Like I saw that there were about 3 red wires with silver dashes. I wanted to make sure they are all interchangeable and Nissan isn't just screwing with me by making them look the same but be for completely different functions.

 

with all those wires I'm sure they run out of colors/patterns lol and I have no idea, but I would be pretty mad lol

 

It's not like anyone should ever have to do this except for when the robots put it together so the wire colors being the same isn't a big deal for them. Damn you Nissan.