After a long delay from my car project, since my car's been on an off-campus street all summer long for college, I'm able to get back in the groove and work on it again. My first hurdle was fixing the headlight motors, which in time, I managed to fix. I could go on the story all day w/ what I went through, but that's not fun.

Long story short, I've foud out that ymy 20A TAIL fuse was always blowing everytime I turned off my headlights, adn the motors wouldn't pull them down, and I found it it's because of my headunit. Whenever that puppy is plugged in, and my headlights are turned off, it'll blow the fuse immediately (well, after closing my headlights as well). Now that I unhooked the headunit, it works just fine. I thought I used the stock wiring supplied, though I had to tweak it up a bit as I didn't use a harness. However, the application should still be the same for most of the wiring I thought, though maybe I have some plugged in to the dimmer wires when it's not needed. Any idea of what I should do? Is it bad wiring or too much being drawn throug ha 20A fuse? And if that's the case, should I bump it up to 25A? My guess still lies with it being wired to the dimmers (I think it was like a tan/brown or an orange cable, I'll look it up in a few anyways).
Thanks everyone,

Travis

 

I had a fairly similar problem with the 86 Camaro I had. Every time I would turn on the head lights it would pop the fuse and the dash lights and tail lights would go out. My head lights and flashers would still work. Turned out to be the actual headlight switch. I replaced that and it worked fine after that. Might be your problem. It just did it one night. No warning, nothing out of the ordinary happened before it popped that first fuse. I was working nights and I left the night before, no problem. Next night I left, POP! Good Luck. It's is a pain to get that switch out on a Camaro, I'd imagine it's no picnic on a Firebird either.

 

Hmm, are you talking about the switch that's to the left of your dash, like hte actual on/off switch? I pulled that out just fine, and took a look inside of it and moved some things around. That may have been what fixed it, I don't know. But I did that and unplugged my headunit at the same time, and it fixed my fuse problem. I didn't think I did anything important to the switch, but I guess I may have? I'll go hook the headunit up and drop another fuse in it and see if it WAS that switch. If that doesn't work, I guess I'm going to have to go cutting a few wires and testing that out. Thanks for the reply.