Went to start the car and noticed the hatch was not pulled down, I pulled the hatch release and the hatch opened, but when I shut it it does nothing and noticed the 3rd brake is also not working. When I tore the pull down assembly apart the only problem was the factory nylon guides were broken. Since I was going to replace them I went ahead and replaced the Motor/Trans and relay while I had it apart. Checked the factory motor and relay and they are working fine as I expected. Figured it couldn't hurt to have a spare motor/trans/relay.

Checked the fuse marked "Lid" it is also good. When I checked the fuse block itself I get nothing in the spot marked "Lid". This should have 12V constantly. All the other fuses have power and are working as is the rear hatch release which I know is a seperate circuit fed off the Acc fuse.

Pulled the entire fuse block down and checked the red and white wire coming from the lid location and everything looks fine. Anyone else had this issue or have any suggestions on where my problem is. Dealership is telling me that I have a short or cut wire. I doubt this since I have owned the car since new and it only has 18K original miles. The car stays in my garage and is started regularly. I haven't spliced anything into the fuse block or wiring harness so I don't see a short or cut wire happening with the car parked.

Thanx for any help in advance.

 

Well, if the fusible link was bad, I think you would have lost more than that, as it feeds the ACC fuse as well.

I don't have a pulldown motor on my '82 bird, so all I can do is point you at the wiring diagram, and hope you can make more sense of it than I did

http://www.austinthirdgen.org/mkport...wn_release.jpg

 

Thanx for the link. Starting to look like I'm going to run a wire from the Unswitched spot in the fuse block to the Lid spot and power the rear hatch pull down this way. I'll hold off and see if I get any other suggestions, but this seems like the easiest fix at this point.

 

Have you probed for supply voltage on the back side of the fuse block? From memory, the supply side of the fuse positions is arranged as several brass bus bars that connect a column of fuseholders. Can't remember the nature of the connection between bus bar and fuseholder, but maybe it's gone open circuit.

Or, the whole bar has lost it's supply - is anything else not working?

But yeah for now, just jump 12v to the Lid fuse, should get it going again.