Last night, my car's tailights, dash lights and interior lights went out... So today I went to the junkyard... And got a new headlight switch out of a 1990 Towncar. Came home, installed it, and then put the new fuses in, and everything worked except the tailights were dim... So I opened the trunk to check the grounds, and the entire trunk was full of smoke! It looked like a scene out of "Up in Smoke" by Cheech and Chong... so I pulled all the carpeting back, and low and behold, the wiring harness going to the trunk lid, (The trunk lock, and the trunk light) Was melted at the plug, and smoking badly... So I turned the car off, and cut the wire before the plug... The plug, and the wire about 4 inches on either side was melted, in fact one side was bare wires! So since it is so hard to get to, (I could barely get to it to cut the wire, to be able to drive the car to work...) I will be pulling the wiring harness from the trunk back into the back seat so I can get to the wire where I cut it.. and putting a new wire in, and this time I will be using marine shrink wrap to give it some resistance from getting cut if it rubs against something... (I LOVE that stuff!) I'm also going to slide some on the wire, then figure out where it will pass any sharp edges, and place it there and shrink it... for the entire wire... (Alot of sharp edges on the trunk lid)
I think the short caused the headlight switch to go bad, since that circuit is on the interior light circuit... which then shorted out the headlight switch... didn't melt any wiring tho, like it usually does on the light switch plug... Altho the small plug at the back with the three wires was melted just a little bit.. replaced that too.... (I got an extra set of plugs from the junk yard today, just in case)
I think the short caused the headlight switch to go bad, since that circuit is on the interior light circuit... which then shorted out the headlight switch... didn't melt any wiring tho, like it usually does on the light switch plug... Altho the small plug at the back with the three wires was melted just a little bit.. replaced that too.... (I got an extra set of plugs from the junk yard today, just in case)
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