okay, I was finally able to figure out why my horn, cruise control and brake light is not working. the 20Amp fuse on the engine bay keep blowing out..the CAUSE of it is the brake light, I replaced a new fuse, the horn would work, but as soon as I press the brake pedal, the fuse blew...

I checked the ground on the rear chassis, good...I checked the bulb, good...

anyone ever have this problem ?

 

have you installed anything electrical lately?

 

Is there moisture in there? I know a person whos lights were full of water and shorting out the circuit..

you must have a short somewhere...

 

You have a short somewhere. Do you have a Helms Manual? If you do, trace the brake light wire and find the short. If you've recently done some wiring on your car you might wanna check that out too.

This is kinda ghetto but my friend once had a short in his wiring harness, so we started the car in the dark and looking for the sparks.. but if you can't see the short then that way won't work.

 

not all shorts spark, and most are hidden under loom or in circuit boxes.

 

Yeah, but if he can see it, then he can find it really quick.

 

nothing was added recently...

but this may be an ongoing problem that I have experinced since my car got stolen in november 02, I just never realized that I never had a brake light....
I thought it was always horn and cruise control...I just finally go thte car running today after a month of working on it, and I just pinpoint the problem to braking as the cause of the short..

the wiring comes from the main fuse in the engine bay to the rear tail lights through the driver side area, I checked with helms....

I am gonna check on the tail light itself to see if it have any water inside, I know, the thief repalced my tail lights with all red and I switched it back to stock OEM ones...

if that fails, can I do a continuity testing, but how do I do this if when I press the brake pedal to check continutity, the fuse blew ?

stan

 

You may want to take the bulbs out of the sockets for the brake lights and check foir corossion etc in the socket. Also, try taking out the lights, replacing the fuse, and hitting the brakes. If the current can't flow thru the bulb to ground, it won't be able to bl,ow the fuse. You can do 1 at a time and narrow it down, but you may have to ohm out a few wires to see where the short is.

Also, try removing the rear light (housings) and see if any wires got in the way and shorted out when you put in the new old lights.

Could be the spoiler too, or 3rd light. (depends on what type teg you have)

 

I had the same exact problem -

I found out that I had accidently pinched the wire going to the break light with the taillight and this caused the rubber insulation on the wire to crack open. The metal wire was then being grounded to the metal screw. I was able to find this problem when I removed my taillights to see if I was somehow grounding that wire....