its the black magic flex-a-lite. yes it is a kit. part of the kit has led lights to let you know when its working and for troubleshooting. it is temp controlled and set up to shut down when i shut the truck down. i have it wired just as the instructions say but it really doesnt get into what fuse i need to connect to, it just says to connect to a fuse. the first one we tried left the led on after i turned the truck off but the next fuse we used the led light turned off after i shut her down....hmmm hammer i could have a bad ground. we hooked up directly to the positve bat terminal but couldnt get the negative terminal loose, so we connected to the wire that runs from the negative to the truck (ground). Its possible but im not sure. its strange because everything was working great and now my ol girl is 6ft deep. when(if) i get her jumped, ill just start taking things apart until i can figure out what happened. anyone have a fuse they recommend hooking up 2? ill keep checking back to see if you guys have anymore ideas, ill stay posted when i figure this out.

 

Check batt with a volt meter. Is it really dead ? If not then I would suspect bad ground also. Mostly because you said you connected to the ground cable so I'm assuming you took it loose to do so.

 

Well i have a different controller and mine is wired to the battery itself with an inline fuse so I cant help you on that one.

 

well at this point i can only assume its dead, nothing comes on, doors wont lock, ect.
link to instructions http://www.flex-a-lite.com/auto/html/instructions.html
i have model 183
thanks guys.

 

I'm unclear on whether the fan stopped when you switched the truck off. Forget the LED - it would take days for it to drain the battery. If the fan kept running, it would suck the battery down to nothing in no time at all.

A bad ground would cause the device to not work at all. A short to ground would hopefully blow a fuse.

You should be switching the low current side of the controller off a switched hot. High current side goes direct to the battery (through appropriate fuses, of course). I have a LED in mine as well, so I can tell when the controller has sent voltage to the fan.

 

Did you connect anything to pins 7 or 8 on the controller?

 

I am running the flex-a-lite kit and didn't get no cool LED light! Guess that's something new since '05...

Obviously you have a constant drain coming from somewhere, you own a multi-meter?

 

yeah the led isnt much use though, because from the spot i mounted it id have to crawl under the truck to see them.

my buddy will be bringing a meter over tonight to see if we can find out what is draining the bat

 

I just pulled up a manual for the 183. Looks like it has several features the older ones don't: The LED on the controller is one. Plus, it won't let the fan start right away, so the battery is not twirling the fan and rotifying the motor at the same time. Also, it can vary the speed of the fan according to how the controller is set.

This manual is written a lot better than the one that came with my kit. Wonder how much just the controller costs?

 

update
so i used the volt meter, triple checked my wires, and moved the negative cable directly to the bat. It seemed to me that it wouldnt matter if the negative ground ran to the frame instead of the bat terminal but i was wrong. everything works now, my truck is not dead, so for all you future efan buyers make sure you hook that beast directly to your bat. Now that i got this issue out of the way i need to install my new headlights, and maybe i will finally post up some pics. thanks again guys!