RedRocket91

Hi and thanks in advance for taking a look at my problems.

My car is a 91 Civic 3 door hatch standard. About 190k miles. All stock except for the radio that Best Buy installed after by previous radio was stolen. The robbers yanked out the old harness and the slot that the radio mounts into - so the installation of the current radio was a bit of a freak show. More on the radio later.

I am not sure if all of these problems are related, but browsing around here made me think that perhaps they are.

1. For years the lights for the instrument cluster have not worked. Thought it might be a bad bulb. Bought a Haynes manual, found out I needed to take the steering wheel off to get to the bulb. SO instead I bought an LED light that clips to the underside of a baseball cap brim at the 99 cent store. Set the LED light on the lip of the instrument cluster and it works like a charm when I need it. I don't drive this car too often at night, anyway. Over the past couple of weeks (while I was trying to figure out a problem with the heater blower, see below) the instrument cluster lights would come on occasionally. Thought it was weird. Thought the instrument cluster lights issue was an isolated problem until a few minutes ago reading other threads.
2. The switch lever to control the heater/ac fan speed has been cranky for a couple of years. Whenever it is really cold, the lever is really hard to move. Sometimes when I would move the lever, the blower would not turn on. At first, moving the switch back and forth through all of the settings (off, 1, 2, 3, 6) would get it to turn on. Then once or twice I had to bang the dashboard. Then eventually banging the dash didn't fix it. So I thought I would change the switch. Ordered a new switch via eBay, installed it, but after I put in the new switch the blower still wouldn't work. Used the search function here, learned about the resistor, how to jump wire the blower, and even found a cool step-by-step guide to troubleshoot. The resistor turned out to be okay and the blower worked when I jumped it. When I was going through all of the parts in the car after learning what the were and where they are from this site, I tried the blower switch again and found that it was working. I thought maybe I didn't test the new switch properly the first time and figured I would leave the console open for a couple of days and see if it held up. 2 days of 60 miles of driving and no problems. On the third day, we drove it on a cold rainy day and the blower worked all the way to where we were going, but then on the way home it worked intermittently. Sometimes it would turn on or off if we hit a bump. So now I used the troubleshooting process I found here. The results of the troubleshoot told me it was a bad ground. I had no interest in taking anything else apart to find how/where the ground got bad, so I cut the ground (black) wire coming out of the 6P connector and butt-spliced on some extra 14 gauge wire and connected it to a bolt behind the glove box. The blower worked with this new ground. I left it open for a full week of commuting to make sure all was okay - including one wet and rainy day like the day it got intermittent with the new switch. 5 days, no problems. I figure it is fixed.
3. Today I figured it was time to close up the console. Realized that both of the tic-tac sized light that illuminate the heat and AC controls were out, so I went to Advance auto parts to get new bulbs. On the way over I remember that one of the four tail lights that have double filaments for brake lights is not working, so I decide to get a new bulb while I am there. Buy all the bulbs and put them in the parking lot at the auto parts store. Heating/ac control lights work, but the brake light filament won't light reliably - only the tail light does. The brake light goes on intermittently, and only before I put the socket back in the fixture. Once I put the bulb back where it belongs I can't get it to light. I figure, hell, there's one brake light on the same side that works + the two on the other side + the center light up high...I can live with that. On the way home from the auto parts store, the blower won't turn on! Argh!
4. I get home and I am totally defeated. I figure that Spring is almost here, so I'll put the console back together and drive the car with hat and gloves and the windows open until the weather warms up. Start putting the console back and when I check the radio it is not working. The radio install was less than ideal, so I am looking at a bunch of wire nuts, and trying to figure out if there are any wires that came apart. There is one wire nit with only one wire in it, and a few other wires that are not connected to anything - but it's a bird's nest of wires and the colors don't match up. I give up on the radio and figure I'll drive the car with hat and gloves and an iPod...and then the blower turns on after I get the console back together. So I turn on the lights to look at the new bulbs I put in the heating/AC control. The lights come on for a split second, then I hear a faint pop and the lights go out. Damn. While the car is still running my wife says she is taking it out to run to the store. And then I see THAT NONE OF THE TAIL LIGHTS ARE WORKING NOW. The brake lights are working, but not the tail lights.

Could all of these problems be related?

Any suggestions on how involved it would be to try to fix all of this?

Any suggestions on how/where to start?

Am I going to have to gut the entire car and re-wire everything?

Thanks again for reading this!

ef_cowboy

Try messing with the conector to the brake light bulb and see if it makes it act up. If it does change the conector.Is there any speed the blower dosent work in?

RedRocket91

Thanks, cowboy.

I fiddled with the bulb in the socket (is that the connector?) a whole bunch and it didn't do much. It was a pretty tight fit and all of the moving around I did to it didn't seem to have any effect. The funny thing is that when I first put the new bulb in, the brake light didn't work but the tail light did - and just with that bulb. Now, none of the tail lights work - but the brake lights do!

As far as the blower goes, the speed setting doesn't have anything to do with it. It goes on an off - like when I hit a bump - no matter what speed I have it set to. When it works, I can change the speed through all four settings + off. When it is not working, none of the settings work.

grog

It sounds like your best bet may be to replace the cabin harness or to get a manual to aid you in repairing it. It seems like your many issues could be from the mangled harness.

Check all of your bulbs (exterior lights except the headlights) and make sure they are the right type. One bulb of the wrong type can cause weird lighting and electical issues. There are single contact bulbs and dual contact bulbs, when mixed up they end up re-routing the flow of electricity.

By the way Haynes manuals are worthless compared to an official Helm manual. I own both and never touch the Haynes manual and I regret buying it.

The steering wheel doesn't have to be removed to replace cluster lights.

Also if you space out you text a bit more it will be much easier to read, and you'll be more likely to get help.
Right now its what is called a "wall of text" which is a bit overwhelming and hard to read.