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Electric all dead after Rock Lights - help - PICS

2K views 18 replies 10 participants last post by  Lord Orange 
#1 ·
I was hooking up my rock lights on my 85 EFI pickup the other day and all of a sudden everything on my whole truck went dead. The funny thing is that I had the rock lights wired directly to the battery with a 10amp in-line fuse. I dont know why hooking up the rock lights would affect my whole truck. So after that nothing worked, no ignition, headlights, anything!! :shaking:

So I checked all the fuses, they are all fine. Cleaned the battery terminals up, tried jump starting it and even had the battery tested at the local parts shop. Everything looks good.

So something werid happened when I tried turning the headlights on and had the ignition off, a relay near the drivers kick-panel was rattling/making some electric sound, kinda like a buzz noise. The relay that is making the noise is the one right above the green fuse box in this pic..


Why would this buzz? Is this my problem?

This is the switch I tried to install..


Any ideas?
 
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#6 ·
So none of the guage cluster works, head lights, nothing?
Check the main hot lead from the batterey to the harness. It's I think a big brown wire....
 
#10 ·
1st disconnect the battery;)

now unbolt that fuse block and look for something odd, corrosion, breaks, shorts, loose wires,. seems I remember reading about some blocks have loose connections.

you have some fucked up shit going on:homer: & it's real hard to try and help with a keyboard:(
 
#12 · (Edited)
BUMP

I was thinking..i had the volts tested at the local auto store, and the battery tested out good. Could the battery still have a blown cell or something that would cause symptoms like this?

Its a middle of the road duralast that Ive had for 2 years only with minimal use.
 
#14 ·
Your battery cables are fawked. There is suppose to be a ground pig tail from the Battery to the body and one off the head to the fire wall. Those are what carry the ground for everything but the starter. Take a set of jumper cables and go from the ground to something on the body (not the frame the body).

See what happens.
 
#15 ·
FIXED UPDATE

So it was the little wire that went from the positive termial of the battery to the fuses under the hood. I guess that wire has a built in fuse or something and so a new connection was made and everything runs smooth and charges fine.

Next question, the guy who helped me fix it said that I should be running a relay under my hood to hook up everything to. (rock lights, CB, radio and tach) Whats involved with putting a relay under there? I know it will keep down the amount of power that could possibly go through my wires, causing a fire or short, but how is that different from in-line fuses?

12 volt guy - Could I avoid potential problems of furture shorts with your fuse block http://www.12voltguy.com/8wayfuse.htm ? I have in-line fuses already, but would the big block of fuses do anything like a relay would? Do you have some fuse box that is relayed??

Sorry for the newb questions, im really new to electrical!!
 
#16 ·
relays are electro-mechanical switches IE: a switch

what they do is take the load off a switch
you use a switch to activate the relay
typical uses are to run higher amp draw items that a switch is not rated for
example
most of my switches are rated 21a
if you wanted to run 4 100watt off road lights from 1 switch

400watt at 12v = 33.33 amps
too high a load for the switch, so use a 40a relay, the switch now sees approx 100MA load, IE: less then 1amp

if you have fuses on each switch already, you don't need more, unless you want to tidy it up a bit.

I do not have a combo fuse/relay block, there are a few out there, but small sized and high priced

I do have relays, 30-40-70 & 200a

& I have relay sockets for the 30-40 size
 
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