Electric, not so bad after all.

After a hard day of moving my sister in law into their new house, towing a big steel loaded up furniture trailer around the city it was time to take the old clunker of a trailer back to the yard. I pulled in and whacked the old girl in reverse. A weird thing happened, the factory fitted reverse (in cab) beeper made this pathetic yelp and then stopped along with just about everything else electrical in the car!! Speedo, tacho, oil pressure, temp, all warning lights, electric windows, I couldn't even put the car in gear ( I guess because it couldn't tell my foot was on the brake). I pushed the emergency overide button in and got it into gear, put the trailer away and hoped out to find out WTF!?

I checked the obvious fuses etc and couldn't find anything wrong, so hoped back in and drove home.

It ended up being one of the main fuses that had blown... I replaced it and all is good again, but I'm concerned as I have no idea as to why it blew in the first place?? I had been reversing the trailer all day without any problems, so it's a little weird...

But the up side and the main reason for the post is that with all the electrics out the engine didn't stop and it drove just fine, all beit only a 3 speed auto instead of a 4 speed and some slightly more hesitant than usual gear changes (I can only assume the gearbox computer reverted to safe mode of some kind, as the overdrive button didn't do anything, nor did the ECU power/economy switch). But it's good to know that the old girl doesn't just fall in a heap when something goes wrong!