OK I can't seem to get my dome light to work.
I popped in a new bulb, no light.
Then since I had a new door switch I replaced the old one. I never tested it till after I put the new one in, it worked but it was all cracked up. I of course checked the fuse wich was fine but I put a new one in just to be sure. Still no light.
So I got tired of messin around and dug out my meter wich I should have done in the first place and low and behold I have +12v on each tab of the light bulb holder. How can this be? Shouldn't one be +12v and the other connect to ground?

I pulled out the housing and tested the wires themselves, still +12 v. The housing is not shorting out on the car body. I also pushed in the switch and still got 12v on each wire.

Where do I look next to see whats wrong?

 

The orange wire at the dome light should always have 12 volts on it and the white wire should have 0 volts on it with the doors closed. The fact that you have 12 volts on each wire indicates that some where the white wire is in contact with a +12 volt wire.

You might try pulling the plastic trim on the interior just in front of the driver's door and tracing the orange and white wires for the doom light there. There should be a connector under the trim, so check the wires there. You can also disconnect the connector and see if you have voltage on both wires heading back into the dash. If you find voltage on both wires then you have a problem with the wiring back in the dash somewhere.

With the connector disconnected, do a continunity check on the wires to the dome light. Pull the light and hook the ohmmeter to the orange and white wires as teh connector. If you get zero impedance here, then the two wires may have a bare spot that is common to both.

Other than that, you will have to trace the white wire until you find where it is connected to a 12 volt source.

Take a look at messages 6 and 8 in this thread. #6 will have some diagrams of the wire routing, #8 has the wiring diagram.

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/elec...rritation.html

Dave