Dash light fuse blowing
 

Hi all!

Got a question. Since I’ve had my ‘86 951, the fuse for the dash lights blows immediately when I turn on the headlights. The dummy lights all work fine. The issue is the fuse for the backlighting. Thought I had this fixed when I required the headlights, but was wrong.



Has anyone else had this issue? Wondering if there’s a common cause for this.http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1607834183.jpg

What is the fuse number that is blowing? If you disconnect the instrument cluster, does the fuse continue to blow? Do you have a wiring diagram for your car?

Thanks for the guidance. This is fuse 38 “instrument lights.”

I disconnected the 2 cluster pigtails this morning, and it still popped when I turned the lights knob. Without the key in the ignition.

Following this, also disconnected the pigtail to the headlight motor, and then the plug to the drivers headlight. Still popped each time.

fuse 38 also feeds the license plate light.

Interesting. When I bought this car, I recall the dash lights worked on the drive home. It also had one of those big aftermarket PORSCHE taillights, which I quickly pulled.

Found that on the license plate lights, one of the wires was grounded to the floor of the trunk. I cleaned up the wire connections on the lights and disconnected this wire from the ground and the fuse survived. Are the license plate lights supposed to have a ground like this?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1607872549.jpg

The brown wires are the ground for the license plate lights. The non-brown wires are not from the factory.

Thanks for your help! Had a positive wire connected straight to ground. Don’t ask me how it happened.

Crazy how I’ve struggled with this for almost a year, and with some help from NY, it seems that this issue was fixed in a few minutes this morning!

It helps to have the factory workshop manual and the wiring diagrams.

When I got my car back from having a complete disassembly and repaint, I had similar issues. I eventually had to disconnect all the exterior lights and found the reassemblers had not connected the side lights properly and was shorting everything to ground. Great paint job, though.