aaaargh

just spent the last few days, tryinng to find a wiring fault, kept blowing the rear light fuse (6th one up on the right) soon as i turned the lights on fuse went pop..... this has been pissing me off for days, so asked my brother 'who's an electrician' to have a look as its white mans magic as far as i'm concerned.

So we disconected the rear loom and the problem was still there.. so wasn't the rear loom or rear lights that were at fault. So i pulled out the entire dash for my brother to see if there were any wire's snagged or splits that may be earthing out and causing the short circuit, but he couldn't see anything obvious so moved to the front of the car, as i pulled the the loom apart across the brace over the radiator my brother said the fault disapeared on his multimeter, looking around i could still not see anything wrong but the side lights, dash and tail were now working???? So i put everthing back together last night and left it till this morning.
This morning i reconnected the front of the car, to my horror the fault was back and blowing fuses again. So, i pulled the loom back out at the front, bought some new fuses and started again on my own, as i was sure i was in the right area, i disconnected the three big plugs by the expansion tank as they were disconnected when the fault went last time, and was then going to reconnect to try eliminate wires (bearing in mind i have no clue with electrics but it made sense at the time). re-connected the battery and turned on the lights to see if the fuse would pop.....only this time i got a weak lights on alarm then tons of smoke billowing out of the air vents and dash...(AAAARGH) quick turn off and disconect of the battery and removal of centre console in about 20 seconds to find that my 'electrician' brother had wired the negative of my stereo to the dash lights circuit and it had now fried the loom

So I found the fault as the lights work good now, but ive now got to go through the entire loom to make sure nothing else is fried....... cheers bro!!!

But what did make me laugh was my stepson who was with me at the time saw the smoke an ran inside to get the hoover! personally i would have got a fire extinguisher, but he is only 10!

Lol i hope you bagg3d and beat him tut tut. bless maybe he thought he could suck the smoke away.

sorry but that is funny

an electrician bro who cant wire in a stereo or find what hes done wrong in the first instance
then your stepson who wants to give you a blow job with henry class!

I feel your pain with this one.....
I had the exact same fuse pop on me everytime i turned my lights on.
I did all the obvious checks - bulbs first, then cluster connections, then wires that i could get to without taking all the dash off - lost my rag after a few days and took it to a professional who traced it to the wires that run dowm the centre of the car to the rear clusters. The insulation had deteriorated after 20+years and was grounding out on the shell of the car (under the carpet) - replaced a few lengths and job done.
Cant remember the cost but it was really cheap - shop was behind my house so local fella hooked me up !
All sorted now though by the sounds of it !
Keep your bro clear next time !

yeah i can laugh at it now, and i ridiculed him in front of his mates last night but i did shit myself when there was smoke billowing out the air vents! all good now though an the rest of the loom is ok. but i shall rib him for some time to come.

I had same problem with my lights fuse traced it to one of the previous owners running connections through every available wire possible so I practically had to rewire most of my dash!!! I hate previous owners

yeah i think that's were my brother went wrong as it was a total mess with wires spliced into nearly everything for the stereo, rear fog light and alarm but its all now been taken out and everything is working ok. i too hate previous owners... but i did find about 50 quids worth of stereo cable under the carpet!