The previous owner of my 91 Z was not a very neat guy. Apparently he was into car audio and he ran a lot of stuff, but his installs sucked. When I installed my deck there were open misc wires running everywhere and some connected to nothing. I cleaned it up as best as I could, but talk about unsafe. The previous owner was also into installing guages, but he used the fuse box as a source for EVERYTHING (which I dont trust). On top of that, he converted to H4 lights and still running the stock wiring (which is wrong). The second day I owned the car I got stranded on the side of the road because I lost complete power. The engine bay wiring is a nightmare, like someone used the cheapest components possible to "upgrade" for sounds, and then did it all wrong. Took me a few hours to fix.

Needless to say, my car has some problems. I'm getting ready to down the car to install a 4th gen interior, and while everything is out I wanted to test my electrical system piece by piece. If things are not right (or using junk parts) then I want to fix it before putting all the 4th gen stuff in. But the problem is I'm not sure where to start in this big jumble of wires. After the interior install I will be installing a bunch of sounds, as well as screens, and lights. So I want to make sure my electrical system is 100%. I've been behind a dash already, saw the different parts of the harness. I have an ohmmeter too which I assume I'll have to use. Can anyone give me some direction as far as how I should go about troubleshooting this?

 

If you can, get hold of a GM service manual for your car and use the wiring schematics to trace the wiring with the meter. You can check the continuity of the wires with the meter and do a visual check of the wires for missing or broken insulation and unwanted additions to the wire.

 

Thanks for the info Trickster! A friend of mine has the service manual in PDF format. I asked him and he said I could have copies of the wiring schematics. Now I'll do some searching to find info on basic 12 volt automotive testing/maintenance to find out what the correct values are and how to test them properly (sorry I'm a noob at 12 volt systems).

Any idea how to test the fuse box? Or is it even possible to damage the fuse box? hahahah