Re: Help! Wiring
The simple method to solve this is to run new wires and discard the questionable wiring. This gets a solution though its not too elegant to some people.
Another method that I have done is to induce a brief short to see if the wisker shorting the cable wires can be opened , flashing the wire to ground QUICKLY. Have you measured real voltage at the pins your concerned with?? A somewhat gentler approach would be to use a light bulb - not led- to load the wire and see the effects. Are both terminals similar brightness, gives you a feel for which is real and possibly which is bridged.
If you have access to a real good ohmmeter, you could measure each lead to see which is lower, sorta like the lamp test above, this is done with the +12 disconnected. I have a milliohm meter that can resolve microohm resistances but that is uncommon for people to have / use.
If you have a + / + short the first deal is to really study the wiring diagram to see where the leads go and see where they share their physical paths. Sometimes a short is not there, instead it is a backfeed thru a stuck switch or semiconductor. This is the reason I use a lamp LOAD to confirm the relative path resistance, and see which is real path/conductor and which is the victim of some bridging action.
I would suggest that you consider a tick tracer. These are devices that draw an impulse of current and generate a short magnetic pulse. A probe then is used to follow the wire to see where the pulse goes. A receiver follows the cable without cutting into the wires, sorta of a radio signal detector.
Let me know, Woody