Lighting and radio problems

[Dave]

I have two problems. The first, the radio will run for about 3 minutes then blow the fuse. This one I believe is a short to ground causing excessive amperage blowing the fuse. Okay no biggie to fix.

The second one, whenever I turn on the dome lamp manually it will flicker real bad then the dome lamp, park lamp, and interior gauges die. This blows the park lamp fuse. Where do I begin looking on this one??

Also how do I hook up my multimeter to measure amp draw while it's on? I know the black lead hooks to the ground so do I put the positive anywhere inside a pin?

[Dave]

I found my radio short to ground. the bolt was loose and stripped so i could not remove it. I know the radio is a case ground so I took the ground strap and bolted it to a torx bolt. Okay radio worked now. Once ran for a few seconds it blew the 15 Accesory fuse. It has a 20 amp fuse. I tried finding a wiring diagram in the Hayne's manual and could find the radio diagram but it showed no fuse. I don't know where the 15 accesory goes.

I replaced the fuse for the park lamp and I have lights once more. I haven't ran them for a while yet but I'll find out on my way home tonight. I also have 3 pass front park light bulbs out, I replaced the one but could not remove the other 2 lower bulbs.

The 15 accesory with the key up gets 12.1 V with the lights off. If it's supposed to be getting less than I could see if it had a high amperage load somewhere because of a bad ground, but I feel that 12.1 V is normal. Again I don't know where the load is because I can't find a diagram anywhere for the fuses.

[Bubba]

I have some decent wiring diagrams. Stop on by and I can give them to ya.

[5sp. mini]

hey bubba i have that stuff at work when you get by. if it,s the van check your door jam. A lot of my wires are broken and they my be grounding out. alan still need the frirebird part.

[Bubba]

Good deal. I'll try and stop by this week. I needed to bring the car by to have you look at something(that shaking I told ya about), but it's over at Chuck's place for pre-SDAC detailing.

[MiniMopar]

For the dome...the terminal on the dome light itself can short against the roof if someone was careless while replacing the bulb/headliner.

[WickedShelby88]

VERY common problem with dome light shorts around the headliner area. Also check you cig. lighter. I believe those are on the same circuit as one of the radios fuses. One fuse is for constant power and the other for switch power. That my be why it doesn't show up in the Haynes. A FSM will be much more helpful in explaining this.

[Dave]

Found the problem. I had a OTC scanner hooked into the cigarrette lighter. The cigarrette lighter runs off the 15 ACC fuse. The added resistance of the scanner must have been enough to blow the accessory fuse which I suppose must also be related to the radio circuit as well. I unplugged the scanner from the lighter and the radio works just fine all the way to and from school. Hooray!!

I can only assume the engineers designed the harness to share a power in that same general area, when the lighter had a higher draw on it, it blew the fuse, opening the circuit, cutting power to the radio as well.

[MiniMopar]

Aftermarket radios draw most of their power from the direct battery feed, which is the cig lighter circuit on our cars. The factory radios draw most of their power from the dedicated radio circuit.

[Jasmeleg08]

yeah I always end up when putting coins in my ashtray dropping them into my cig. lighter socket and popping that fuse and my radio goes dead. Finally I just unplugged the socket. I mean I could just plug it with something but I never use it. Also for your dome light you might want look at the headlight switch. Could be a bad ground there.

[Dave]

The dome light must have been related to the cig lighter problem. It hasn't gave me any problem. I still have a few problems electronically, window switch contact and the sliding door lock. Things I can handle myself though.

Thanks guys.