I think I may have found my smoking gun related to a starting/running problem, but I am not sure what I am looking at. I am hoping someone here has some experience with these particular wires.

Vehicle is a 1990 GTA, TPI 305 w/ 5 speed. Speed Density.

I have been having an intermittent problem with starting, and occassionally stalling. It has been a pain to chase down on account of it being so intermittent. Once I get it home, hook up a fuel pressure gauge and a noid light it starts. However, today, while playing around hooking up a battery charger (car spending a lot of time sitting since it won't play nice) I found this connector appears to be experiencing a lot of heat. (This connector lives below the fuel line, but I pulled it up above for the sake of taking pictures)



Note that little black item just downstream of the plug. That is a cap from a top post battery. I don't know where it came from, but the wire has melted its way into that plastic cap.



This is the inside of the plug. You can see (barely) that the housing is fairly well melted around the connector on the right.



This shot shows that the wire feeding this connector is a fusible link. It feeds directly from the positive battery cable.

Can anyone tell me what circuit this is?

I would like to try to figure out why this connector is heating up this way. My experience with weatherpack connectors has been positive thus far. I find it hard to believe that the connector is the root problem.

While we are looking at this situation, I would surmise that the 15 amp fuse (black cylinder on red wire) is not original, but that does not seem to be posing any problems right now. Just for my own knowledge, if someone recognizes all of this, would that fuse have once been another fusible link? And if so, is it likely that it is seriously undersized?

Here is what I have done so far:

Took the offending connectors out of the plug housings and found them to look like this:


That's certainly not what I want. The question is, what's causing this? Is the circuit drawing more amps than intended, or is the connector presenting too much resistance?

Not knowing what circuit this is, I went after the connector. I cleaned up the terminal ends. The male end was pretty easy. I had to use a small file to try to get to the contact surfaces of the female end. This was the best I managed.



I gave them a coating of dielectric grease and then reassembled the plug, putting the offending circuit in the previously vacant center position. I would prefer to keep these wires farther apart, but I don't trust the melted side of the plug to keep things where they belong and thus keep resistance to a minimum.



This should at least give me a sense of whether or not I am on the right track in chasing my intermittent problem. I will have to go down to the boneyard to see if I can find another of this weatherpack connector. It is a bit larger than the standard ones.

If anyone has any idea as to what circuit I am working on, I would appreciate the input.

it has something to do with the pcm..or ecm. my fuse went out and didnt allow my pump to kick on and the injectors wouldnt spray either. one simple part can change it all! but im pretty sure its one of those that it powers...ecm. or pcm

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Thank you both for the replies.

The wiring diagram is awesome.

It looks like that orange wire may be the one feeding the "AB" terminal on the ECM (third in from the left on the bottom).

I've got something to work with here.

Thank you.

If that inline fuse was used to replace a fusable link, then you need to replace that inline fuse with a fusable link.
You run into problems when you take a 10 gauge fusable link wire and turn it into the small strand that runs through a fuse. Its too much current wanting to go through and the fuse is not enough to handle it. The fuse may not blow but it will sure melt things.
Thats why newer cars have Mega Fuses.