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headlight switch good, harness perfect, fuse good, still no tail/dash lights

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Old 12-21-13, 03:51 PM
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headlight switch good, harness perfect, fuse good, still no tail/dash lights

[IMG]http://i568.photobucket.com/albums/ss124/ralphge/bitesuit-1.jpg[/IMG

Got my flame suit on. I have searched a billion times.

1: checked fuses, and replaced them even though none were blown.

2: replaced 100a main fuse, just because.

3: replaced headlight switch with known/tested good one.

4: pulled harness and checked all connections, everything is good.

Tail lights, turn signals, supermarkets, and dash lights are still out, and will not come on.

Brake lights work, headlights work.

I have searched, and read about 20 threads, read the FAQ as well. Nothing has worked. And I have replaced everything I can.

I'm pretty much f*cked right now, unless one of you guys can help me figure this out
Old 12-22-13, 04:59 AM
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Did you check that your tail lights have a good ground? There may be a loose ground wire somewhere.
Old 12-22-13, 10:27 AM
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Originally Posted by AGreen
Did you check that your tail lights have a good ground? There may be a loose ground wire somewhere.
Grounds are fine, everything was working fine until a fuse popped, and never worked again.

I'm assuming there's a short somewhere, but I've checked, and cannot find anything. I don't know where else to check
Old 12-23-13, 09:34 AM
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Does the car have an air bag or not?
Old 12-24-13, 11:06 AM
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sounds like you need a new cluster .. dash lights and tail lights don't work ? same happened to me in my 90 GXL .. replaced my cluster and presto .. the **** for the light switch is going to be bad ..
Old 12-25-13, 11:54 AM
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It seems unlikely that multiple grounds would simultaneously crap out when they're tied to a shared component. I would suspect that the fault would be in the positive side of the circuit. Also, if the taillight grounds were bad, it would appear in other devices such as the rear defroster as well. I'm not sure which components share the same ground as the gauges, but the same fault would show up there as well.

There are two circuits that get power when you turn the headlight switch to the first position. The "Variable 12v" circuit that feeds the cluster & logicon backlights is the Red/Green wire (all controlled by the dimmer ****), while the "Constant 12v" is the Red/Blue wire. Red/Blue supplies power to the parking lights, taillights, storage box lights, etc

Power for all of these comes from the White/Green wire and runs through the 60A BTN (Underhood) and 15A Illumination (under dash) fuses. If you pull the headlight switch and jumper the White/Green wire to each one, you should see 12v at their respective targets. An easy place to check with your multimeter is the taillight connectors (Red/Blue wire) and either the Gauge or Stereo connectors (Red/Green wire).

Once you've established that they are receiving power, then I would check the grounds. A quick & dirty way to do it is to run a jumper wire from the suspect ground point or device connector to the door latch post or the hold-open spring at the front of the door. If it works with the temporary ground & jumper wire in place of the switch, plug the switch back in and repeat. If it dies out after that, your switch is bad. If it's still good, pull the temporary ground. If it dies out from this, the ground is suspect and needs cleaned up per Aaron Cake's Ground FAQ. FWIW, the taillight grounds on my 1987 GXL have never been touched and work without any fuss.

Remember, the multimeter is your friend.
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