Well, honestly its best to find where the short in the harness is, because if it is a place where the harness has rubbed through on a contact point, there is most definitely going to be other wires there that, if they're not effected already, they will be shortly. And because the wire you're tracing down is running from the engine compartment junction box to the Alternator, the short is in the engine compartment. You don't have to go taking half the car apart to find a short somewhere in the middle of the dashboard. Thats when it becomes a real issue.
I would start at the Alternator and just move along the harness, not moving it much, you don't want to move the short away from its bad spot, you may never find it then. But go along and stop at the first spot where the harness is contacting the engine block, or a harness fastener. Any spot that could potentially have rubbed through. Just keep in mind heat and vibrations and contact points. Thats where short circuits will be.
Another option if you have a multimeter. It is to set the meter on the ohms setting, unplug the alternator and put one lead of the meter clipped to that orange/light blue wire and the other end, pull the blown fuse, and you should read continuity on that wire to the fuse from the Alternator. Since this isn't an open circuit, you can watch the meter and do a wiggle test of the harness and watch the meter. When you come to the short you should see the ohms reading on the meter change, that means you're close to the short.
You will have to open the harness, but right now you're only dealing with one wire. Once you find the short, inspect the other wires around it for damage as well. You might find something you weren't expecting at all. But the situation could be much worse.
I believe the Alternator is right on top on this model.
I added 2 OEM diagrams below, there is a connector the wire runs through. 169M, its location is in the 2nd diagram. To help you get an idea of what path that wire takes to the Junction Box.
You don't need to take out the whole harness, you just need to follow that wire.
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Friday, March 25th, 2022 AT 4:48 PM