Anyways, There was an exposed speaker-wire that used to power a small sub-woofer in the back. Well, the wire was flailing around and making contact with (perhaps) the rear strut-bar causing my speakers to start 'squealing' slightly in tandem with the revs. Anyways, after a couple minutes some light 'electrical' smoke started coming from behind my CD player. I quickly turned off the unit, but since I was on the freeway in rush-hour traffic I couldn't easily pull over to inspect the problem further.

So, after 30 seconds or so the smoking stopped and everything 'appeared' to go back to normal... Except when I tried to turn the CD player back on it wouldn't. Several moments later I noticed that my 'hatch' warning light in the idiot cluster was on. I pulled over and left the car running, got out and firmly shut the hatch. The light stayed on. Then I noticed that none of the interior lights worked .

So anyways, this kind of sucks. I checked all of the relevant under-dash fuses and they were all fine. All of the electrical works except the interior lights, the constant 'hatch' warning and the CD player.

My question is; where should I start? I think the obvious would be to pull out the CD player and see if I can discover where the smoke might've came from. I guess my question is, is there a 'related' wiring system/harness behind the CD player that powers/effects the idiot lights, over-head lights and the CD player?

All of the other idiot lights are working fine, as is the lighting for the heater logicon etc.

Any practical imput is appreciated, no matter how small.

 

i'd probubally take out the head unit first being as its probubally fried, it could have a short inside shorting positive to negative or something thats causing your lights to mess up or something, other then that and the fuses, slightly un likly but there might be a melted wire somewhere along those lines, maybe that speaker wire that was bouncing arround.

 

 

Check the head unit first, as some have fuses on the back, also, switch out the "room" fuse, just to cover all of your bases.

 

I was attempting to wire in a head unit in my FC. The guy before me did an awful job without using a harness... I too lost my interior lighting when attempting to wire it up. I never got the cd player to work, but even once i got it out, my lights still wont turn on. My fuses are also all intact. WTF!?

 

Because it's an FC, check the grounds. Something similar happened to me, and something else happened when I installed my head unit. If nothing changes when you unplug the head unit, check the grounds on the car. If they look fantastic, I guess you start following wires around until you see what's effed.
And from experience, sometimes the +12V wires burn up (happened to me twice). If that happens, test voltage at the cig lighter + and see how it's doin.

Oh yeah - don't learn electrical safety by accident :P

 

You let out the Magic Smoke! Those things all run on magic smoke and once you let it out, they don't ever work again.

Computers and televisions, same thing.

So Sorry.

 

magic smoke is fixable, just gotta find out what got smoked and replace it.

 

haha, you guys are hilarious.

Thanks for the help. You guys have given me all the info I need to get started.