dash lights and e-brake questions

[buhjuh16]

hey i was wondering if anyone might have an idea of what my problem might be. a fuse keeps getting blown everytime i replace it. When it gets blown all of my interior lights go out except my cd player (alpine) and lights on the rear view mirror. I'm guess theres a bad ground. I was wondering if anyone knew how to find the problem.

Also is there a trick to tightening up the e-break? I dont have hardly any at all. Its on a 95 Gt converable. Thanks alot guys

 

[droptopford 5 0]

hey i was wondering if anyone might have an idea of what my problem might be. a fuse keeps getting blown everytime i replace it. When it gets blown all of my interior lights go out except my cd player (alpine) and lights on the rear view mirror. I'm guess theres a bad ground. I was wondering if anyone knew how to find the problem.

Also is there a trick to tightening up the e-break? I dont have hardly any at all. Its on a 95 Gt converable. Thanks alot guys

as far as the fuse goes, your guess is as good as mine cuz i was thinking a bad ground maybe. but as far as the e brake goes, i was asking how to tighten mine up a little while ago and I learned that the e-brakes on our cars have no real adjustment since they're supposed to be "self-adjusting" even though as you know, this doesnt always work out. mine used to pretty much max out and barely have enough brake to even slow the car down, but i replaced my rear brake pads and i got back all of the e brake i'd ever want. it's not to the point that it will lock the rear tires to a skid, but so what, the only need for a locking e-brake is on FWD cars that cant powerslide otherwise... hope this helps, and if there IS a way that someone figured out how to adjust the e-brake(like a jerry-rigged way to take up slack in the cable) then i too would like to know, just for future reference when these pads are low

 

[HISSIN50]

If these cars have an illumination light for the stock stereo (I assume they must), it sounds like someone did not use it for the deck install (instead using the parking light wire. If the deck does not dim with the dimmer, they did NOT use the dimmer circuit). This would mean that stock wire could be floating around and touching metal and shorting out.

Kind of a longshot, but it was worth mentioning.

Good luck.

 

[mo_dingo]

You may have a bad connection somewhere, which ups the amps and pops the fuse, But I highly doubt it.

My guess is you have a short to ground somewhere. Time to isolate all the wires on that fuse and locate the short to ground. One of the 12v+ wires on that fuse is shorted, so remove them from the distribution block and seperate them (so they are isolated), and do a continuity test between each wire and ground. Since there are lights on that circuit, some wires with have decent continuity between it and ground, but never zero ohms. You might see 1 ohm, or .5 ohm, but not zero. Make sure you have a good multimeter, as the cheap ones will not read accurately. Once you find one w/ zero, that is the wire that is shorted. If you can't isolate the short, run a new wire. It's faster and less hectic.

Good luck.
Scott