taillights and dashlights dont work

[raymals]

My niece had an aftermarket radio installed on a 2002 Grand Am by a "friend" and now the dashlights and taillights don't work. I checked the fuses and bulbs and they are good. My guess is that Einstein cut some power wires when he installed the radio, any ideas on what I should check/do???????

[gravis2000]

Best thing to do is drop back and punt. Take the car to a Circut City and see if they can fix what is cut.

[bigdaddy12003]

You could just pull the stereo back out and just find the wire that is cut and fix it your self. It would be a cheaper fix for you.

[CluelessMechanic]

hey man I did the same thing... of course i'm to broke to afford getting it fixed by someone but i know a shortcut if you're just concerned about having your dashlights again... dunno about the tail lights though... anyways... remove the trim that you'd have to remove to put a new stereo in, after that you'll see i believe 4 ... maybe 2 bolts that hold the whole cluster of gauges... if you take that out and look on the back there are 4 light bulbs... take ya 2 wires... one black one red preferably so you don't mix up the + with the - ... solder the +/- wires on the one of the bulbs towards the middle.. the far left one and far right one won't work for some reason... anyway... take the - wire and just ground it and run your + wire to your accessories wire... wallah... you should have dashlights again... though they will be on 24/7 while your car is running... but i know i hated driving in the dark... i checked all the fuses on mine too and couldn't get it to work... so i did what's explained above... no problems now lol...
if there's a way to half-@$$ somethin without hurting anything.. i'll figure it out lol