ok heres the story. my 89 civic had a POS aftermarket radio that didnt work. i decided i want to put in my 4th gen prelude radio instead. but the previous owner cut the wiring harness to put in the aftermarket radio.
so i bought a stock harness from ebay, but the colors didnt match the civics wiring. when i was figuring out which wire was the "power" wire, i hooked up the radios "illumination" wire to a yellow and red wire. i didnt think it was the live one, and i forgot that it was resting on a metal plate, i just twisted the two wires so they were pretty exposed. i turn on the car and i see a little cloud of smoke, and quickly rip apart the wires. one of the wires dripped a little bit of plastic.

the radio worked perfectly after i hooked eveything up, but when it started getting late, my dash lights didnt work (the ones that illuminate the speed0 and temp, the other warning lights worked though) my taillights also werent on when the headlights were on, but worked when i stepped on the gas.

so did i cook up my electrical or did i just blow a fuse or something?

i also remmeber that the old owner had some type of wire that he put in that was connected to the ground wire on the radio, but i never reconected it, hopefully this is the problem....

 

hopefully you just blew a fuse, if you didn't blow a fuse after coking the wires like that, then someone has way too large of fuses installed.

 

If you get this figured out tell me how you fixed it please, because I helped a friend install a tach on in his car and we blew something out too. Now the interior light, radio illumination, and clock dont work. But the $#!TTy thing is its not a blown fuse.
Good Luck

 

definitely sounds like a fuse

 

it's a fuse, i did a similar thing in my hatch like 2 months ago, i had the wires hooked up but exposed & set the radio down & somehow multiple wires touched eachother & I blew the interior accesory fuse.no biggie, fuses are cheap.