Thread: Stupid lights!! (wiring help!)

So every time I turn on my first lights (brake and dash) the fuse instantly blows. I spent hours today trying to follow wires and taking things apart, but couldn't find any short. However, I suspect the problem could be related to the CD player wiring (the constant power wire to it from the car has no power, another thing I could not figure out) so I had to run my own power wire). It runs right into the constant power wire GOING to the CD player, meaning it also powers the clock and this set of lights. So after it started happening, I pulled that wire off, and the CD player clip apart, and it STILL happens. This happened to the car before, but it turned out that it was because of one of the wires on the radio harness that you aren't supposed to hook up was hooked up. Now I have no idea why it started happening.

Any one have any suggestions?

When this happened to me, it was because I grounded the stereo, not knowing that the stereo harness is already grounded or something like that.

If you connected the ground on the aftermarket harness, disconnect it and see if that fixes the problem.

That actually happened to me last time it didn't work

Sorry to say I never found the short, but I solved it relatively simply by running a new wire to the light switch in place of the shorted one (which was the power wire for all the lights), clipping the power wire on each device, and rewiring it to the new wire. Problem solved! It all works normally now.

The parking lights, tail lights, and interior lights are all on the same fuse. The interior lights feed into the stock stereo in order to light it up. If you have an aftermarket stereo, it uses that feed to tell it when to dim for night time driving.

Chances are you have it wired wrong or the stereo is messing things up. IIRC, the positive feed for the interior/exterior lights is red/blue and sometimes red/green. This is the one that will be blowing your fuses. There is also a red/yellow wire which acts as a variable (dimming) ground for all of your interior lights, it comes from the dimmer switch.

Disconnect the red/blue wire from the stereo and see if you continue blowing fuses. If that is the case, see if you need it at all for your stereo, if you do need it, make sure to check that you have it properly wired.

For this reason, I never connect any illumination wires on aftermarket stereos. 99% of the time it just causes a short. Plus 99% of the time the dimmer doesn't do anything on the aftermarket anyway. My professional advice is to just crimp off the end of the ill. wires and forget about it.

Agreed.

I could never get the illum. wiring right on any of the 200sx's I've owned, so I just forgot about it.

It caused the problem identical to yours, on my 200sx SE.

Yep, the strange thing was that it wasn't even hooked up to the stereo, but a gauge light (to the red/blue one) ironically in an attempt to get it to dim right, which also ended up not working well. I am fairly sure this is what caused the problem, but something more must have resulted because I made sure to disconnect all of the lights/devices from that red/blue wire (gauge included) and it still shorted. It really made me wonder if something melted somewhere, and especially now since I know for a fact that wire short was not through any of those devices! The other fishy part was how it took about 15 minutes for the short to occur the first time, but afterwards it happened instantly..

Oh well, no worries now, I took a new wire and cut that one from the switch, replaced it with the new one, and ran it to all of the places the red/blue one went. Really only took a few hours and it all works perfectly fine now (including dimmer on the OEM stuff )!