Blowing fuse link SBF no 4

[subynut]

My Dad's 97 legacy outback has decided to eat one of the fuseable links: SBF no 4. (45A) Whatever it is, all is dead except the 4ways. It died on his way home from work, I swapped it and it lasted about a mile before it gave up again. So, my question is what is SBF no 4? My haynes manual says nothing about it and so does the user manual and the only fsm I have is for the 1st gen legacys.

Does anybody have the wireing diagrams for the 97 legacy outbacks? If I know what it's for and where it goes, then I can start tracing wires (what fun) and pinpoint who shorted.

Also, I doubt it's related but, after we replaced the longblock,we've been having a cyl misfire on 3 and 4 while crusing and only crusing. But that's another nightmare in of itself.

THanks.

[Cougar]

The SBF-4 fuse ties to the ignition switch so it is no wonder nothing works if it is blown. There are 3 main wires switched in the ignition switch and power is supplied to them through the switch by a blk/yel wire coming from the fuse. The 3 wire colors are red, blu/red, and red/yel. The red/yel wire ties to fuses in the dash and since they aren't having trouble then the other two wires are the suspect paths.

 

The blu/red wire looks to me as the most likely path for the trouble to be on. It ties to places under the hood and tranny areas. You may be able to replace the fuse with a brake light and then see what makes the light dim when you remove various items from the circuit. When you remove the high load the light should dim some at least. This trick may not work so well since there is a lot of high current paths to check.

 

Since there are a lot of places to check for problems you would be wise to get a service manual for the car that covers the wiring or go to the Subaru website and purchase their download service that you can use to print out what you need to cover this problem. It will be well worth the 20 dollars. You may also be able to get on the EBSCO site and download the info. Here is a link but I don't know if it will work for you. You should be able to get on it at your local library.

 

http://arrc.epnet.com/autoasp/index.asp?sid=31850561&uid=s4772963.main.autorefctr