Discovered a new problem over the last couple of nights. Note - my wife has been driving the truck recently, and she has no idea if this has been an intermittent or persistent issue over the past month or so.

1998 4Runner SR5 AT ~170k miles

Symptoms are:
Oil light, seatbelt and transmission selector remain on when key is removed.
Other accessories (wipers, turn signals, windows, sunroof, defrosters and heater fan) all work with no key in the ignition
Stereo does not work without key
No key-in-ignition chime with door open

Ultimately, she complained that the aftermarket remote was not working, and through the battery was dead. I went out to try and noticed the battery on the truck itself was dead (probably from accessories being on with the truck parked over the weekend). Charged the battery overnight and then noticed these issues. I'm thinking the remote not working is due to these issues, as it is disabled when the key is in the ignition.

The truck started and ran fine when the charged battery was put back in.

Any ideas on how to troubleshoot, or what the problem could be?

I found a similar post from a couple years ago, but the problem seemed to resolve itself in that thread - https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f2/o...nition-202449/

 

No ideas, guys?

 

Did you boost the truck or take the battery out and charge it? If you just boosted it, take off the neg. cable and leave it for a couple minuites, it'll re-boot your computer system and should fix the problem. if not, haul the casings off the computer column, and check for any runaway ground wires or corrosion, jumping the positive and negative, giving the truck power without the key. You may have to change the ignition.

 

Thanks.

By yanking fuses, I traced the problem to the "wiper" fuse. I also figured out that everything behaves normally if the tailgate window is down an inch or so.

Looks like this is pointing me toward a short or stuck relay for the rear wiper and the window being down just cuts power to it?

Other weird observation - the wipers worked with the wiper fuse pulled...