Instrument panel fuse blowing

[AdamOst]

Any ideas on what I can check, since friday night the 10amp instrument cluster fuse keeps blowing, rather annoying at night trying to guess your speed. Its the speedo/tacho one, the warning lights like ABS and stuff still seem to work.

[kiwisurf]

Theres a short in there somewhere.

Make up a tester with a headlight bulb and some spade terminals and start wiggling wires until you find it!

[AdamOst]

What wires?

[AdamOst]

Or is this an auto electrician job to look at or just a normal mechanic? any recommendations of places to take it to on the shore, auckland?

[Dubby458]

you need to find out what other circuit is run off the same fuse, like try your interior overhead light, see if that works or see if cig lighter works, something else could be shorting which is causing the fuse to blow, i have seen bulb holders in interior lights break and bulb going right to ground

[AdamOst]

Overhead light hasnt work since I got the car. Cig lighter works still. Spose I can look around tomorrow.

[sultan]

Be careful when the fuse pops because your alternator won't be charging the battery due to not being able to contact the check alternator light, or something

[AdamOst]

 sultan said:

Be careful when the fuse pops because your alternator won't be charging the battery due to not being able to contact the check alternator light, or something

Really? D: ive done about 100kms of driving since it popped, and am going to hamilton next weekend.

[sultan]

check your voltage when car running, it might be different to the power circuit on my 94 wrx. it doesn't take too much power to run a car when driving. i'm not exactly sure how much, but say if it averaged 15ah, you'd be able to drive the car for around 2 hours before it depleted the battery. which could by why yours hasn't conked out yet if it does work the same as mine

[AdamOst]

ll check it tomorrow then, i must be pretty close as ive done a bit of running around stop start dirving and usually have my headlights on and stereo going. On a side note.

Using race chrono as my speedo till i get it sorted out.

[AdamOst]

I think my car is just trolling me, I pulled the headunit out to check, everything seems normal, taped the wires together to tide the birds nest up a bit, put it all back together, checked the fuse and it didnt pop Also now my interior lights are wiring, they haven't worked since I bought the car. While I was doing the other stuff i decided ot pull the bulbs out as I assumed they were blown, as no other fuses in the car were blowing, and the one that's been blowing has only done it a week, not the 3 months the lights havnt worked. Checked the bulbs and they seemed fine, tried the button and they worked

Subarus...

[kiwisurf]

There will be a short in the wiring for your headunit....especially if its a mess as you say.

You really need to go through all those wires and tidy them up and check all connections.

You will go over a speedbump or something and they will move and touch and you will be back to square one.

[AdamOst]

The factory loom from the car is fine, and im only using 3 wires to power the headunit/ground it so I cant really see any short or anything. Ive tidied them up anyway so will see how it goes.