A few days ago my '84 Z started messing with my mind. The second I pulled the headlight switch, I lost the radio, power seats, power locks, all lights, and all accessories. The car stayed running and would turn off and restart fine.....with no accessory power. After a few minutes, I restarted the car and everything worked again....'til I pulled the headlight switch. Dead again. Wait 10 minutes or so and everything is back up and working.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

I changed the headlight switch last night and the problem is still the same. Everything works until I pull the switch, then it stays off. If I wait 10 minutes or so, everything "resets" and it all works again 'til I pull the headlight swtich........then it all dies again.

It almost sounds like a weak circuit breaker or fuseable link that can't handle the load.......but I've never heard of a circuit breaker inline anywhere and I've always thought fuseable links just died.

I'm at a loss as to where to start looking for the cause.

 

I guess I found it.......or at least I hope I found it! Apparently the K-Mart fog lights, installed by the previous owner, had decided they were done. (it isn't like they actually added any light anyway!) When they died, they somehow caused a dead short. Since the previous owner hard-wired 'em to come on with the parking lights, they killed everything.

One PO problem down.......who knows how many left to discover.

 

Thanks for posting the answer, I'll have to go see if some loose wires where I used to have fog lights are grounding out my system...

 

I guess I should bring you up to date on the rest of the related findings. The fog light issue helped for awhile but there ended up being a deeper issue that turned up later. The hot wire that runs between the starter and the fuse panel had corroded down at the ring connection on the starter. It carried enough current that it checked OK with a simple test light but it wouldn't carry any amp load at all.

Best I can tell, the power wire for the headlights was back-feeding power to run the rest of the car through the headlight switch. When the amp load through the switch increased as it tried to power the car AND the headlights, it tripped the internal breaker in the headlight switch. At that point, everything that had been drawing through the switch died right along with it.

Once I fixed the wire that was supposed to be feeding the panel, everything worked as-advertised.

So.....the bottom line is to check the hot wires at the starter and make sure you are getting full amperage all the way to the fuse panel.

I hope this helps and might save someone some headache.