popping taillight fuse

[StatikPulse]

So I've been at this a few days now and think it would be best for me to talk it out before I take a sledge hammer to the car

Long story short, the taillight fuse keeps popping. I've been slowly bringing the car back to life since storing it well over a year ago. Since storing it, I've installed a wideband, turbo timer and FMIC. I've also had to remove an a/f gauge to replace it with the wideband one.

So far I've removed both the wideband and turbo timer wiring, removed taillight bulbs, and looked for frayed wires. My front end is disassembled so I was also looking to see if anything there would be causing a short there. I can't seem to find anything. The car has been stored inside, so there's no water in any parts. It seems I've exhausted all options I've found in the forums.

Any advice on what to check?

 

[97'spyder-trbd]

for some reason my car had the same problem, i checked the fuses, checked the bulbs and everything i could think of. so until i got it checked i wired some direct cables from the battery to the running liqhts in the back because blinkers and brake lights worked perfectly fine. so it worked and then i got it checked and it turns out that there was a serious wiring problem because the previous owner of my dsm wired everything wrong. so my advice is take it to someone that knows about wiring because its a problem you cant do yourself.

 

[rhodes2010]

Alright, I am throwing in my 2 cents on this.
The 96 GSX came home with no taillights and I hafd to replace the relay
next to the fuse under the hood.

To me, being new to DSM, the relay and a fuse for every thing throws
me off. In the old cars we just have fuses.

So, pardon my ignorance.

All I am sayin' is do check the relay, swap it with another and see if you
can stop the taillight fuse from blowing.

I too was chasing the wiring very carefully with a simple volt-ohm meter .
I like the kind of meter with a needle. Just removing fuses and checking
for where I was getting voltage, then disconnect neg battery terminal
and check for shorts.

If you want more on this just ask.

Anyway, good luck.

P.S. I want to say the taillight fuse was causing the dash lights to also die.
I think I started chasing down dash lights when I came across this.

 

[StatikPulse]

Thanks for the suggestion guys. I want to try to figure this out myself as the car is not ready for the road yet (bumpers getting painted). If I don't find the issue before then, I'll bring it to someone who is better equipped.

Yes the taillight/dash lights all work on the same circuit. I didn't think to check the relay as well.

I'll tackle this some more today/tonight, I'll report back if anything changes.

 

[StatikPulse]

Can't figure it out. It wasn't the relay. Luckily I found someone with a short circuit finder, hopefully it'll be able to pin point where the issue is, because at this point I'm completely lost.

 

[onefast2gdsm]

you have a short somewhere. Get a wiring diagram and trace the wires for breaks. I had the same issue, I had a wire grounding on the frame.

 

[hoppe_4]

try checkin the radio illumination if you got a new deck installed, mine were poppin and the illum. wire was grounding out.

 

[ktgurl87]

Mine kept dying also on the GS. What it ended up being was the previous owners genius idea of leaving a broken "leg" to the big alternator fuse stuck in the box. That was shorting a bunch of crap out. The bolt that holds it in had actually welded itself to the fuse leg. Once we got all that out of there with a fresh fuse and bolts, started replacing blown fuses and so far nothing has blown again. I'd check and make sure your connections are good EVERYWHERE.

 

[NOREMORSE93]

My Power Lock fuse keeps popping as well, so it could be that its prob. grounding somewhere?

 

[ktgurl87]

Most likely you've got a wire grounding out somewhere.

 

[StatikPulse]

Thanks for the help guys. It was a pain to track down since that circuit touches so many things but managed to figure it out last night. It's an issue with the white plug on the driver side taillight. When I plug it in, the circuit shorts. I think it's been disconnected since I bought the car but I must have plugged it in when I re-installed the taillight.

Is that plug needed on Eclipse back-end conversion?