Running lights stopped working.. Fuse keeps blowing
 

Hey all,

have any of you had your running light stopping working all of a sudden?

last night when I was leaving work I noticed my lights were not working... so i checked FUSE and it was blown.. well I put a new fuse in and it blew as soon as I tried to turn the lights on..

this has never happened before and I have not changed a thing on the truck.

I did a quick check to make sure i had no loose wires grounding out and did not see any..

has anyone else seen this problem?

Sounds like a short to ground in the circut.

Are you losing all of your lights except the headlights and brake lights? My 90 did that a couple of times. Once, the insulation on the license plate lights had rubbed through and was shorting on the bumper. Another time, the wiring at the taillights where the trailer plug wiring was tapped in had issues. The last time it happened, replacing the headlight switch fixed it. Hope this helps.

The headlight switch is the weak link inthe lighting circuit, they go bad quite regularly.
Check it for signs of overheating, my money is on it as your culprit

yup all lights are going off except headlights.. i will check switch.. and more wiring tonight

If it is the switch, it wouldn't hurt to put the running/park lights on a relay when you repair the bad switch.
My .02

Look for a dime in the cigarette lighter.

Well CRAP. I got home checked all the wires and could not find any bad wires.. so i put new fuse in and of course now it works..

which is even worse cause know I have no idea what caused the problem.. I guess I will keep playing around..

Maybe the dime in the lighter shifted ??[redface]

As far as the lighter socket is concerned, seeing as how they are called on to perform so many other tasks other than lighting cigars, I would run a big fused all-the-time-hot wire to it, independent of any of the other circuits.

Fuse situations like you are experiencing are why I segregate all lighting circuits, as much as possible.

Trailer-lights should NEVER be in any way connected to the truck lights; the only thing they should share in common is the HOT battery post.

As already suggested, relay the parking lights; then, go a couple steps farther and fuse each set seperately, i.e. left-front corner, right-front corner, tail, cab, etc.; seperated and fused thus, should a short occur, it will only shoot the fuse to that group, narrowing the search for the problem.:cool:

Same thing happened on my '93, fried the switch AND the connector. I ended up with smoke coming from behind the dash going thru Portland, Oregon, in traffic, with the 30' 5th wheel hooked up. Makes for a nerve wracking couple of minutes trying to get to the shoulder and get everyone out of the truck.

I'll be putting a relay on the running lights, along with one on the trailer running lights, plus doing the headlight relay mod at the same time.

Reach under the dash and pull the headlight switch connector to inspect it, just be ready to fix it right, as the terminals probably won't go back on due to melted connector body.

Well the Fuse blew again..

So I put in a new headlight switch ( only took 5 mins to change that )
and guess what it blew again..

well atleast I know it is a wire somewhere.

So I started at the back and checked all the wires.. everything is nice and wrapped.. so I opened up the hood checked and BAM there it was..

there is a huge wrap of wires that run along the passenger side fender and then down near water bottle.. well guess what my BHAF mount I made was wearing threw the wire..

so i unwrapped and found out the 1 wire it wore threw was my running lights to front fender..

so i cleaned all the wires and fixed it and then relocated the wire to other side of waterbottle.. put new fuse in and all is fixed..