The four fuel injectors, the two O2 sensors, the auto shutdown relay, the alternator, the coil pack, the intake air temp / manifold pressure sensor, and an electrical noise suppressor all sitting on the same circuit as the fuel pump, the fuel level sender and the ECU. (or PCM, a.k.a. the computer! ) Any thing on this list shorts out and we roll to a stop.

The dark green wire (with orange stripe) splits off to all of these things one after the other without increasing the gauge. So you have an 18 gauge wire split off into eight additional 18 gauge wires split off into 2 long 18 gauge wires, etc. It’s like plugging everything in your house into 3 power strips hung off an extension cord. If you’re not racing your Neon you may never notice how fragile this setup is.

For those of you planning to keep with the Neon you may want to spend a weekend with the engine wiring harness out of the car. Get a big wooden board, pin everything down and start running separate wires to everything ‘plugged in’ to the green and orange power strip. I think I’m going to go so far as to separate the O2 sensors off with in-line fuses. Last time I tried to fix this problem by building an in-car override for the circuit when it popped. I see now that all I was doing is plugging the Christmas Tree into a different outlet to fix the shorted out bulbs.

Update: I added 4 more things that the sneaky green and orange go to…