- Tue Jul 29, 2008 5:57 am
#63737
People who don't know anything about electronics always say "it's a short, it's a short". What is a "short"? That's when a power wire gets pierced and touches the body of the car which is a negative. Going directly to ground offers no resistance, so it pulls a lot of amperage and burns down the wire. The power never goes to the load it's intended to because that load has more resistance.
In this case, your door triggers are actually grounds. If you short this wire then it forces your dome light to always be ON and causes no harm because you cannot short a ground wire. The door trigger wires are not fused because you don't fuse ground wires.
You can check for a grounded wire aka "short" by getting a $20 multimeter from Sears, setting it to continuity (indicated by a triangle symbol with a line through it), touching one probe to the body of the car (bare metal), and the other probe to the strands in the wire. A reading of 1 means that it's not shorted. If your meter makes a tone and drops below 1 (0 if there's very little resistance) then that wire is grounded.
There is no reason for neon lights to be connected to the door trigger, however, I have yet to see any of that kind of lighting modification done properly. So it's possible that the installer messed something up. I would disconnect everything first as part of chasing down the problem.
The interior light has a 10 amp fuse in the fuse box. Sometimes fuses appear to be good when they are in fact blown. You can verify them by checking for continuity between the two points on the fuse when it's removed. If it's good, then you check the power side and follow it all the way to the dome light and see where it stops.
I would check your door trigger wire (thickly insulated light green/red wire in the kick panel and running board) and door pin switches. This wire is supposed to be grounded when the door is open and should show 12v when closed.
