exterior/interior lights not working!

Canada Nissan Automotive
1

i posted this up on SON240 forum with no help so far lol so i’m gonna try here:

hey guys, when i turn on my lights at night, the interior doesnt come on, nor the exterior except for the popup headlights…

when i break, signal, reverse, all those come on, but not when i just sit there with the lights on…

any idea? i checked ALL FUSES(every single one, just in case one thing lead to another), all are fine…the switch is fine, since if that wasn’t working i’m assuming the headlights wouldn’t turn on, or signals not work, etc…

k here is what i did today…

i ran the car idle on my driveway with the rad cap off to air out the radiator since it was overheating yesterday a bit so i was checking to see if ther was air in the system…

then i took off the door panel on the driver’s side to fix the power window…that lil relay box or whatever, i took that apart and figured out the problem…

then i took out the centre console, like where the deck is, and the armrest/ciglighter/ashtray centre piece to see why the power mirror switch doesnt work…turns out it’s not even hooked up…about 4 loose wires under the armrest…i didnt touch anything else…i put electrical tape on the end of two wires which were just sitting there…they were splicedw ith the wires that go into the cig lighter…a black one and a red w/ white stripe…i taped the ends of those two wires with electrical tape, i left the other 3 wires alone, just how it was…

i went to watch a movie at yorkdale, came out only to find out the lights dont come on…that is when i did a full fuse check, i took out the centre console again to see…i checked each loose wire to see if it was a grounding problem(which i suspect is the main culprit here)…but nothing did anything…so i just drove home with my friend behind me…

any ideas?..again i doubt it’s the switch since it was working perfectly fine before, and the headlights come on…so there is signal from the switch into the system…
is ther anything in the driver’s door, or the centre console, or the audio deck area that could mess up the lighting? again all the fuses are fine, so nothing was shorted…i’m guessing it’s a grounding problem somewhere…which is why i ask if there is anything in the centre console or the driver’s side door that could affect it like this…

thx in advance.

Eric.

UPDATE: I checked what those deadend wires are for…3 lead to the driver side door, 3 lead to the passenger door, i think they lead to the power mirrors…now there are 3 wires left…one is a wire i dont know where it leads, i tried to trace it, but it goes into the dark where the deck wiring all is mixed up…and the other two wires…they are spliced with the plug that goes into the cigarette lighter…red and black wires, power and ground i assume…
n the whole thing leads under the carpet…is this supposed to be power to the power mirror switch?

can any of these possibly cause my problems? possibly a wire could’ve melted somewhere which was sending the signal to light up everything? any idea where this wire would be running from? signal thru under the steering wheel column/dash and out into the engine bay?

2

hmm, iono if the 300zx electrical system is the same, but theres a clearence illumination fuse which blows out and does exactly the same (No interior,no cluster,no driving lights, just high beams)

did you install anything recently?? (cd deck etc??)

Good Luck

3

yes i installed a cd deck a week ago…well my DRL works when i’m driving, and the main headlights work(not only high beams, both regular headlights and high eams work on the pop up)…
i dont remember seeing anything like that in the fuse panel…is that part of the deck’s wiring harness? i know there is a fuse along the yellow line…

4

Did you connect the dim/illumination wire on the deck to teh vehicle?

5

maybe its a relay?

6

would a relay/fuse on the deck’s wiring harness mess up the rest of the car’s system like this? well i’m gonna go try to take a look soon, i dont have a flashlight but i’ll see

7

maybe the illumination for the deck is tied into the car’s lighting so the deck dims when you turn the exterior lights on. if u f*cked that up, shorted it, whatever, it is either a wire, a fuse or a relay within that circuit

8

hmm…k from what i remember, i did NOT hook up the illumination/dim…i believe it was an orange wire? cuz my deck does NOT have a dim feature, it’s an oldschool panasonic with something they call “double illumination” or somethin, “day/night face” or somethin where it doesnt dim at all…which is why i didnt really believe it could be that…but i’ll check it out anyway…

bytheway, i tried to take off the steering wheel column cover, how do i do that? i took out the screws on it right behind the steering wheel on the column…but wouldnt open up…cuz i was thinkin of tracing the wiring from the switch to see if there are any cuts or opening along it that could be severed now…

9

so u left the orange wire hanging? if it grounded then it would prolly short out the lights when you went to turn them on.

10

the orange isnt just freely hanging there, i covered the end off with electrical tape…i just took a look at it, but yea, lets say it DID ground and short out…would this’ve cause a fuse to blow? cuz all the fuses are fine, in both fuse boxes…

11

it should have. maybe someone put in the wrong fuse, if that happened then the relay might have burned out, or maybe the relay has just gone bad. i would start by replacing the relay, if that doesnt work then i would get into tracing wires and all the hard stuff. always do the easiest cheapest fix first, then go from there.

12

which relay? there’s no relay in the back of the deck where the wiring harness is…oh bytheway, i was looking around the car today, and i noticed there’s another fuse box under the intake box behind the driver’s side headlights…but i cant see what is in there since the cover is blocked by the stock intake…anybody know which fuses are in there? I saw one for A/C, but the rest i couldnt see…anything in there that might be related?

yea i did some hard stuff lol, i unscrewed the steering wheel column cover, and the dash part under there, all the wires seemed fine, nothing was out of place or worn out or anything…i took the switch out too…seemed fine, again it works with the turn signals and high beam and regular headlights…so i doubt it’s the switch…aghhhh

13

no man, the relay that controls all the lights that you’re talking about. nothing to do with the deck.

14

hey, i figured it out! it was a fuse! the weird thing is i checked the fuses before! anyway I was checkin again thru them one by one by the driver’s side…and i pull out the “tail lamp” one, and that one is broken! so i’m like “wtf?” so i put in another one(15a as it says on the panel), and i try the lights, it doesnt come on still…so i go down n look at the fuse again, it’s broken again! so i put in a 20a in, and everything works!..so i’m guessing something in my car is drawing more than normal…is this a bad thing? a friend of mine told me somethin about the car’s electricals should be able to withstand up to 100amps or osmethin and that goin from 15 to 20a on this isnt a big deal.

but yea, hanzzz thanks for ur help

15

I wouldnt recommend puting a fuse higher than rated, could cause real electrical problems (Ex burnt wiring)

Find out where or why its blowing