dash lights and tail lights go out keeps blowing fuse

i have a 92 olds eighty-eight and the dash lights and tail lights keep going out and its burning out fuse #14 i pulled the trunk light the one thats in the back window and the socket for it was melted but the wiring was good so i just disconnected the socket. I replaced the fuse and drove for about 3 minutes and it burned out the fuse again even without a bulb or socket connected there. There are no pinched wires and all the other bulbs work fine that one wasnt working at all even when connected. Worked fine 2 days ago and yesterday i just started having these problems. Could it be the headlight switch burning out that fuse and causing that bulb to not work??

THANK YOU!!!

Is it the fuse for the 3rd brake lite or the tailites, if tailites start looking at the wiring in that circuit, a basic daigram can be found at autozone.com, repair guides. I believe the 3rd lite is on a different fuse, check it out.

http://www.autozone.com/az/cds/en_us/0900823d/80/15/ec/20/0900823d8015ec20/repairInfoPages.htm
figure 38 if you click that its fuse 14 that keeps blowing and there isnt a seperate fuse for the 3rd brake light their all linked together and everytime it blows the fuse it takes out the dash lights and the tail lights.

also brake lights work if brakes are applied and reverse lights work too when the fuse is blown

Ok so the tailites, dash lites and 3rd lite are on one fuse, I'd disconnect the 3rd lite completely for starters, then, get the head lit sw. out and disable the tailites,, do the same for the dash lites, this will help isolate which of the 3 circuits is at fault. Do this one at a time to see which blows the fuse, of course.

the 3rd light is already completely disconnected the socket isnt even anywhere neer the wiring. car worked fine when sitting and running for 3 hours with me pressing the brakes atleast 50 times and the fuse did not blow i moved around the dimmer alot to see if that was the cause and nothing there either so i drove the car and 3 minutes after driving the tail lights and dash lights went out again. now i was told the dash lights go out to warn you that theres something wrong with the tail lights as a safety measure. Any ideas?

Not so on the dash lites, you will have to try what I said to avoid taking apart half the car.

ok im going outside to try that right now you can probally expect a message back in about 30-45 minutes

tried all of that removal of dash and disconnecting wire one by one from the headlight switch and none of them had any effect on the problem. The problem wont happen if the car isnt moving but as soon as i drive 1/4 to 1/2 of a mile bam the lights shut off and the only lights that stay on are the interior and the headlights. i also tried a new 3rd brake light bulb and replaced the fuse again and it blew the fuse again as soon as i drove that short distance. 3rd brake light does not work at all now though even with a good fuse in iit.

if my instrument cluster was slightly loose it wouldnt move when sitting and would move when the car is moving. i replaced that a few weeks ago so maybe that could be the cause but would that cause the fuse to blow and still have lights and speedo and gas guage working?

Seperate circuits, if this problem started after you did this work ( not mentioned previously) retrace your work steps.

replaced headlight switch retraced every wire for it and they were all good with no pinches in them or anything. checked guage cluster and even blew the fuse with no guage cluster in the car. The only thing that gives me a hint is the 3rd brake light was blown and the socket for it was melted internally but i traced all the 2 wires for that all the way back to the firewall and no pinches or anything. all the other tail light wires are good and the sockets for the lights are good and so are all the lights. also the thing under the front drivers side carpet neer the hood pop is clean and not wet or coroded. I havent done any work recently to the car the only thing that i did was replace the guage cluster about a month ago but everything has worked fine until friday when this problem occured. i even tried today putting the old cluster back in and it still did it. all the wires and plugs are tight. Radio was never spliced has factory plug with another plug going directly from that to the radio with no spliced wires.


Any more ideas??

Thanks again

I still don't understand whether you disabled at it's source, each affected lite circuit in that fuse feed, then retested the car. If the short is in any of the 3 circuits you stated then by removing voltage from the circuit, if the short is there, would stop the fuse from blowing, correct?,

you are correct but it doesnt blow with any of the 3 circuits disconencted. i tried everyone of them and it only happens if the car is moving.

So, disconnect 1 at a time and then drive it, or am i missing something here?

i already disconnected one at a time and drove it each time and none of them blew a fuse. i put a 20amp fuse in there instead of the 15amp and it works fine but im worried about it melting wires or something

just reading along & no your not crazy i dont think he understood the drive the car after disconnect of ea. circuit part

thank you. Btw the car was rear ended last summer and the replaced the licence plates lights but would they cause this problem so far down the road. The only socket that was melted or even damaged was for the 3rd light and i retraced all the wires and none of them are split or damaged at all. Unless it doesn't have enough room to hit any metal in the trunk until im moving and then has a hairline split in it just enough to cause the fuse to blow. but im thinking thats rather unlikely

fixed it turned out that one of the bulbs was broken internally and shorting everything out.

THANK YOU