Need some advice troubleshooting an electrical hiccup
 

Hey guys,

I'll make this quick. I had a USB adapter in the lighter for my phone, I noticed the light wasn't on last Sunday, so I pulled it out then plugged it back in and it seemed to work.

Monday morning I noticed my interior lights weren,t working when I opened the door, but when I closed the door I noticed the USB in the lighters, light went on.

Today I noticed now all of my gages (i.e, fuel, oil pressure) aren't working either. Is this something fuse related? That lighter looks pretty old and I was wondering if this could be a short.

Thanks

Jesse

Check your fuse and the relay, I blew both the fuse and relay by accident when I was installing my RKE flasher wire to the hazard switch. Lost power to the CIG light hole, clock n interior lights.

Other than that your car could be suffering low battery or shoty old wires.

I'd multimeter everything.

I have to randomly unplug and re-plug my USB charger too... my guess was the terminals are old and corroded

I would also clean all the grounds

Thanks for the advice guys and yeah..I'm guessing I need to pick up a multimeter for a lot of reasons.

I just bought this vehicle about a month ago so I am having a lot of fun. Any chance you guys could direct me to where I could find these relays and fuses? I saw a box under the hood, is there another one for this situation with the dash?

Is there a position that these fuses are located? And does anybody have an image of what a "relay" looks like? If my memory serves me correctly, are they those square tin looking plug ins? I have no clue how to check those to see if they are bad. I'm going to take care of it Monday morning so any advice would be helpful.

Appreciate it,

Jesse

Box under hood holds fuse and relays.

Fuse can be visually checked or use the checker slot that is in the fuse/relay housing. Relays are a little harder and need multimeter and external power supply to check, they don't always break but if there old they will fail.

Check Clark's Garage Home Page for most things.

Download all the workshop manuals and have them printed into a book at your local print shop.

I have found that the cigarette lighter diameter doesn't work with current plug-ins for radar, phone chargers, etc. I pulled mine out and put a new one in from autozone and problem disappeared.