Ok... I am going to post this here for starters and I will post in the electronics board as well...

The other night I had a weird problem happen to me while driving.

Took the car out for a spin and everything was going as normal. Drove to my buddies place and I had to go over a rough patch of gravel road before I got to his place, came off the rough gravel and was on the pavement for about 20 seconds before I pulled into his driveway. Just as I was pulling into his driveway here is what went out on me...

- Park lights
- headlights
- interior lights
- dash lights
- radio

I never thought to check to see if the power locks and windows worked or not.


The car stayed running fine and the brake lights, fog lights, and signal lights stayed on. I shut the car off, started it back up but still all of that stuff was off

So I drove home (about 10 minutes of driving) and just before I pulled in my driveway everything came back on normal. all of the above listed things were working fine. I haven't driven it since because I want to find out where the problem is in case I have a potential for an electrical fire (that would suck!!!)

Can someone point me in the right place here to start looking?

I did a search and I think someone mentioned in an another post about a wire coming off the starter??? This wire feeds the accessory circuit or something like that.. it wasn't really clear....

 

Start by verifying continuity of all your fusible links. You may also want to check the light switch, lighting fuses, and fuse panel bussing.

Since the lighting circuits are involved, the ignition switch is not a suspect. Since all other accessoroes appear to be working normally, the charging system is not an immediate suspect.

You may also want to check continuity of the bulkhead connector below the power brake booster.

 

Would that bulkhead connector below the power brake booster be on the inside of the car or the engine bay?

Some more information...

On the way home I saw that my light switch was still pulled out so I figured I may as well push it back in as the lights were out anyway, when I did that the radio came back on, pull the switch and the radio would go out. I then decided to do some experimenting,

- Light switch pulled out all the way, radio went out
- Light switch pulled out in the park light position, radio would go out

- Light switch pushed in all the way...radio would come on
- Light switch pushed in, dome light switch or maplight switch (I have t-tops with the overhead console) switched on, the radio would flicker on and off...

None of these times did the headlights come on... the guages worked (like the speedo, fuel, oil, temp guages as I could see them)

I was completely baffled....just before I pulled into my driveway as I was experimenting everything came back fine


So maybe this is a no brainer... the light switch could very well be the culprit... I just wasn't sure that all of these things were on the same circuit....

Some other people have suggested these as well...

1. Dimmer control burned up
2. Junction at the starter-it's a very common problem for the nut to get loose causing all sorts of intermittent problems
3. Ground strap that goes from the back of the engine to the body

I think I will start with the light switch as it was doing some weird things to the interior lights and radio...

 

The connection at the starter is the beginning of the fusible links to the body.