ok this has happened a few times now but this time it was kind of scarry. i have a 87 N/a auto. i turned the car on and no light in the guage cluster was there i have had this happen before so i knew i no light in rear of car as well as the orange lights that come on when ou just rotate the **** ones. i guess you call them daylights you know what i mean. now to fix it i have noticed that the illum. fuse is blown last time it was kind of melted. this time i had prblems getting the fuse out . it ended up breaking and i had to use a pair of pliers to get the rest out. i put a new fuse in and it s back to normal. i do have two seperat guages hooked into the fuse box i believe one uses the cigarette fuese holder and the other on the sun roof one. either way its happened atleast 2 times before. Please let me know what i can do to fix this problem.thanks a lot. is this common ?

 

If you used the "illum" circuit for your gauge illumination, you wired something wrong. My guess...

 

Dull/corroded contacts = resistance = heat = burned connectors.

The trick is to see that connectors have clean shinny bright metal-to-metal contact.
This goes for fuses, switches, relays, and all harness connectors.
Spray contact cleaner also helps.

 

this happened on my firneds 240sx, he hooked up his cd player wrong, using hte illum. wire. and his cluster doenst light up anymore.

eric.

 

He used the illumination wire as a ground right? I did that years ago, had a heck of a time figuring out what I did. If you've wired anything, recheck it. If you've taken anything apart in say, the dash, take it apart again and look for pinched wires(another thing I've done before). Whatever you do, don't put in a higher amp fuse to keep things working - you'll start some bad mojo like that(no, thank heaven I've never done that).

 

Lol, count me in the "wrong ground" club, also, and I should know better...

Suffice to say, now I don't use ANY existing wiring for grounds, I make my own for new applications and physically ground it to the chassis all alone...

 

Yep, learning quickly from mistakes is an essential part of working on cars.

 

Common on Nissans and Mazdas for clueless radio installers

 

ground automatically means to randome metal thats attatched in the car for me. like the frame.

 

That is not great either... you see a lot of lame DIY and semi professional stereo installers ground to things like the dash subframe... something that is bolted in after the car is painted, and that often will not have a good ground.

 

i didnt use the illumination for anything. i used the fuse holder for the sunroof fues to give one of my guages power and used the cigarette fuse holder to give the other guage power. they are fine its just every now and then the illumination fuse just go out and this time around i mean it reallly went out. worked fine turned car went into the store, came out turned car on and i noticed no lights in the dash and not rear lights.

i guess like you mentioned above could be a wiring problem in the sterio part i guess i better check that. or keep blowing fueses. thanks again


also you were saying spray some contact stuff on there ? exactly where on the fuse itself? just wondering thanks.

 

Unless you've submerged the car, ala Sponge Bob Squarepants (picked that up in another thread, got a kick out of it), or live in a tropical rainforest, you shouldn't have any surface corrosion on anything in or around the fuse box. Contact cleaner is great for removing any oily residues & solder flux, but not for removing corrosion. In fact, if you don't remove the condensation caused by the rapid evaporation of the contact cleaner, it'll CAUSE corrosion. Get ya some good 'ole 400 grit paper or emory cloth, or a pencil eraser for small terminals, to remove any oxidation...

 

Unless you've submerged the car, ala Sponge Bob Squarepants (picked that up in another thread, got a kick out of it), aka my car

 

noobs should ahve to pay you 1.00 for ever time you point out the error of their grouding ways

I ahve been doing some searching on my radio gremlins and must have read this like 50 times.

 

and people wonder how I have 12000+ posts

 

Can't help u there.... Icemark is the man!


well, two things... disconnect the neg of battery and always do the ground wire first =D
i learned that the hard way..... + using a wrong wiring harness on my radio.... didn't groud....
and next thing i know, the speakers aren't getting sound..... now i need an amp to get that radio working.... =)

i've installed other's radio's and checked my own gauges before, and if u have bad connections, (especially illumination in your case) it will fry the fuses pretty badly....
i think the MELTED fuses do mean a thing though.... I've only seen melted fuses once... and in my opinion either they are REALLY crappy fuses (trust me, i've tried... 50 for 1 dollar at the 1 dollar store) or the current was much stronger than it was supposed to be...... the plastic casing Burst, the metals get stuck in the fuse holders...... NOT a good thing

 

ok... sorry for the dp!!

 

the fuses i use are from the autoparts store so i dont think they are exactly the cheap kind. guess ill have to keep an eye on it.

could it have to do with adding the other guages? im just asking cuase it never did it before i installed them.

or something with the new radio i put in?
let me know thanks.

thanks for all the help.
andy