92 Blazer K1500 courtesy lights fuse shorted

I don't know where to go on this problem, I was driving along when suddenly my radio went dark, its been about a month and the the clock/radio is dark and the interior lights are all dark. the fuse for COURTSY is a 20 and will spark and burn out as soon as I try to replace it. Can anyone give me any suggestions for a solution?

Thanks.

Reply to
massive bookbag
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Sounds like a wire got rubbed raw and is grounding out (shorting) somewhere. The only real way to resolve this is to start disconnecting any and everything that's powered off that fuse until you find the guilty component. When you do isolate the circuit that's causing the problem you can trace it down and repair the damaged section.

Start by disconnecting anything with a plug. Like the radio, and then remove any light bulbs that would come on when you hit the switch. Try it...if the fuse doesn't blow, starting reconnecting components until it pops, then you've found the bad circuit.

This reminds me of something that happened to the parking lights on my '86 K5 Blazer. Everytime I turned on the parking lights the fuse would blow. After screwing around for a couple of hours I got brave and crawled underneath the truck. Once under there, I cut the main hot wire that was common to everything on the parking light circuit. I replaced the fuse and turned 'em on--the fronts came on and the fuse didn't blow. So at that point I knew it was isolated it to the back of the truck. I disconnected the taillight harnesses behind the rear bumper, reconnected the cut wire, and hit the switch--fuse blew. So at that point I knew it was that wire, on the back end of the truck, causing the problem--NOT any of the stuff plugged into it. The bad part was that the short was somewhere on top of the gas tank and made access impossible. I ended up cutting the other end of it as well and feeding a new wire through the wiring loom, then connecting both ends.

Sometimes electrical troubles can be a real pain, and as you can see, not always easy to diagnose. Cutting the wire was, for me, the only way as that circuit ran from front to back and split off to every parking light in the truck.

Good luck.

~jp

massive bookbag wrote:

Reply to
Jon R. Pickens

Here is what I do. Take a blown fuse and solder a light bulb to the terminals. Just use a diagonal cutting pliers to break some of the plastic off the top of the blown fuse to expose the terminals. Solder some speaker wire tot he terminals and solder a tail light lamp to the other end. Put the fuse in and the lamp should light. (It the circuit is shorted, it will light.) Then start moving wires, unplugging stuff and so on. When you find whatever makes the lamp go off, you're there. If the problem is in the dome circuit, removing the short make put the dome lamp in the circuit, and the test lamp may just get dim unless the dome lamp/lamps are removed or the doors are closed.

Al

Reply to
Big Al

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