khmerprophet

so i was driving the other night and i heara click and the dash instrument fuse blows out and all the lights on my dash stop working, cluster and climate control lights. i get home i replace the fuse an turn the lights on and click it blows out again. i do it a ouple more times just to try my luck but nothing, same thing happens everytime. i asked a friend that works at honda and he said i might have a short somewhere or try using different cluster. i tried it but still same problem. i was wondering if anyone had any clues to where this short might be around or has anyone else had this problem before. any info would be of help, but if you dont have anything nice to say just dont say it and move on


oh and btw its a 96 civic hatch

Fabrik8

I don't know what the problem might be, but it often helps to post the make, model, year of car.

98formulaLS1

well regardless of the year make and model, the overall diagnosis can only be one of three things:

1. A positive voltage wire has been shorted to ground.
2. A ground wire has been shorted to positive voltage.
3. Some device on the circuit has gone bad and has internally shorted those two signals together.

Here's a good start. Go ahead and remove the instrument panel, then replace the fuse, and then check the fuse status. If it shorted, you now know it's not because of the instrument panel. If the fuse blows without the instrument panel, you will have to follow the wiring for that circuit portion through the car and find the fault, which will most likely be where a wire was cut and is not touching a metal portion of the vehicle chassis.

khmerprophet

yea sorry i forgot to add that it a 96 civic hatch

yea i tried to troubleshoot lastnight and found that it was the cluster, so i know its a short somewhere in the lines. i just havnt found it yet. i havnt looked at the wiring diagram yet, about to look for it online to check to see if i can find it. thanks for the input

actionpaintball

#1: you will need to eventually track down teh short-it could just be cleaning the circuit board or an abraded wire or you may need a new cluster.

If it is only happening VERY randomly and you want a cheap INTERIM fix (not permanent) replace the fuse with the appropriate sized circuit breaker...this is a backyard fix, but it basically will mean when the short occurs-the breakers will switch off, wait and then click back on-so you do not need to pull over and swap the fuse out. It's obviously blowing for a reason, but the cluster is a low current draw and there is little risk in throwing in an inline breaker. Make sure to size your breaker at the maximum recommended fuse for the location.

http://www.electerm.com/breaker.html