brake lights out?!?

[spider_slayer]

ok, i'm no wireing expert so i'm kinda scared about this problem. but yesterday while on the highway my dash light went out and i was pulled over because aparently my brake lights had gone out also. i got home and my dash would not light up and my brake lights would only light up when i pressed on the brake......any ideas?? i know i should "check all wireing connections" but i'm really not sure where to begin.

[vlow1210]

Hey I had the EXACT same problem about a month ago. What happened was I installed a mechanical oil pressure gauge in my car and the line leaked, and oil got all over the fuse area in the driver kickpanel. The dash lights stopped working (although the clock still worked fine) and tail lights wouldn't light up when you turn on the headlights, although they would light when you pressed on the brakes.

Apparently the oil caused some sort of short I guess, and the brake light fuse kept blowing when I turned on my headlights. I just cleaned out the oil, put a new fuse in and now it works fine. So I'm pretty sure it has to do with wiring in that area.. BTW did you check your fuse?

[spider_slayer]

not yet, its simply to damn cold to go out side. the actual temp is about 11 right now not counting the wind chill. but yea i installed an oil pressure gauge as well. there wasn't a catastrophic oil leak was there?? did the gauge still function?? i'll start checking stuff tommorow. and where exactally should i be looking for a leak??

[spider_slayer]

ok, i looked for oil and tis all fine.....my oil gauge is still working properly (although i discovered its time to change my oil) anywho....which fuse is the taillight and dash fuse...i don't want to chech fuse by fuse......

[vlow1210]

hmm forgot, should say on the cover of the fuse panel though. i think it's like the 3 or 4th down on the left side??

[spider_slayer]

well, that helps a little. sucky thing is that its still jsut so damn cold

[need2drift]

same thing happened to me a while back i changed the fuse about 10 times cause every time i put a new one on it would blow as soon as i turned the lights on. It turns out that one of my front blinkers hade a wire that had rubbed on the front bumper support untill it was grounding out. After I fixed that i changed the fuse again only for it to blow out again!!!!! Eventually i changed all my tail light bulbs and it stopped, and i have had no problems since....

[VitaminT]

Yeah it is a fuse. The tail lights (rear running lights, not brake lights) are wired into the same circuit as the cluster so you will know they are out when the cluster goes out.

It should be the third from the bottom on the right hand side. 15amp fuse marked tail lamp.

This is for a S13.

[spider_slayer]

i have an s14....does it matter?? thanks for the help by the way

[VitaminT]

I would just look for the fuse labeled tail lamp and that should do the trick.

Are you running any JDM cluster or JDM cluster wiring harness by any chance?

[spider_slayer]

ok, found it......it is definitally a fuse. there was a 25amp fuse in the socket. i replaced the fuse with a new one turned on my headlights and the fuse was immeditally blown. i then put in a 30amp fuse to see if it was a short or not and that fuse was good for about 5 seconds then blown. strangly while the 30 amp was in and the lights on the car seemed to be losing alot of power, (light dimmed, idle dropped) but it blew and everything went back to normal. so i'm guessing there is a short somewhere.....anyideas here? you've gotten me this far vitamin and i appericate it

[spider_slayer]

oh, btw....i indeed do have an aftermarket cluster for my sr.

[spider_slayer]

bump.........because i seriously need this fixed!!!

[vlow1210]

hey.. don't put any higher amp fuse in there than it says to.

there's a short somewhere.. you have to find it!

if you're not competent enough, bring it to a repair shop that does auto electrical work. you don't wanna mess anything up.

[VitaminT]

The reason I asked if you were running a JDM cluster harness is because it will blow fuses like that. Oh and the stock amp on the S14 must be different because on the S13 it is 15amp.

Oh and for some reason on mine when I did run the JDM harness it wouldn't blow the fuse and just melted down the socked for it. Beats me. It is miswired or grounding out somewhere.

It could be grounding out but usually when it does that it pops the fuse right away (even 60amp car audio fuses).

[VitaminT]

Oh and what exactly do you mean by aftermarket cluster?

[spider_slayer]

ment jdm cluster, i bought an aftermarket cluster instead of getting one outta the180sx

[VitaminT]

My guess is that you might have to change up the wiring for the cluster but I am not sure. When I started blowing fuses I just dropped my SR tach in a us cluster (with us cluster harness) and rocked on.my guess is that the pin outs on the jdm cluster are SLIGHTLY different than the US.

[spider_slayer]

lol, rock on my brother! i'll look at that tommorow. its jsut won't warm up though, we've only had 2 days in the past 3 weeks above 40 degrees and there is 4 inches of snow on the ground right now

[ride4lame]

same thing happened to me a while back i changed the fuse about 10 times cause every time i put a new one on it would blow as soon as i turned the lights on. It turns out that one of my front blinkers hade a wire that had rubbed on the front bumper support untill it was grounding out. After I fixed that i changed the fuse again only for it to blow out again!!!!! Eventually i changed all my tail light bulbs and it stopped, and i have had no problems since....

same thing happened in my s13.try switching out all the bulbs or atleast checking them.the elements can break and ground out on itself. if it was the cluster i think it would happen all the time.mine would work for a while, then the broken element in a bulb would move when i hit a bump or something and break.it sucked