This 2001 Lincoln Continental came in with the complaint that the speedometer and the tachometer were not working. The mileage displayed dashes instead of digits. There were “Check Traction Control” and “Check Transmission” fault messages. The “Service Engine Soon” light was on and codes P0500, P1502, P1744 and U1039 were stored in the PCM. That is a lot of stuff going on in one vehicle.
When I got in the care to pull it in the shop the first thing that I noticed was a relatively new radio install. It had the the look of a BYB. The head unit was not securely mounted and was not flush or square.
The amplifier wires were not properly routed behind panels.
More poor radio install work. The wires were stripped back, the bare wire was jammed into the fuse block and wedged in place by the fuse. This practice effectively ruins the fuse block because it over compresses the spring tab in the fuse block terminal. Back to the problem at hand though. Notice the empty fuse cavity just above the green, 30 amp fuse in the center of the fuse box?
The fuse cavity is labeled as number 15. Checking the wiring diagrams I found that it supplies power to the ABS EVAC & FILL connector and the RESCU (Remote Emergency Satellite Cellular Unit) Module. I did not search through all of the vehicle’s wiring diagrams but it did seem unlikely that this one fuse could cause all of the listed issues. I went ahead and installed a new 10 amp fuse as shown in the next picture.
I rechecked and everything was back to working as it should. The only exception was that the SES light was on. I went the further step of checking and clearing the codes in all modules.
Another one fixed.