tonyponykay

hi all,

well the kid i bought car from had a radio wire spliced into the ground wire to the cig lighter, which had no power to it.

I fixed the cig lighter, kept the wire he had spliced into the ground for that cig lighter and blew the courtesy lamp fuse when it went back together..

I think i just blew the new fuse that i put in to replace it because my door locks stopped working again.

question is, where do i ground the wire he spliced in if not to that cig lighter ground? I was reading other posts and seemed somebody had suggessted that this could be an issue, but no solution was listed.

i put a new console on there and am not looking forward to taking it all apart again just because its hard for me to get down there with my disability

any help would be appreciated, oh this is on the 1980 vette

thanks
tony

...Roger...

Did he have the ground wire attached to the power wire on the lighter ?

7T1vette

Ground wires are black; power wires are red, orange or yellow. For a radio installation, the power and ground wires going to the 'new' device have to be large enough to carry the max. current load of that device; the fuse feeding that line [either old or new] needs to be large enough to handle the total load of whatever is attached to it. A hi-watt stereo unit needs to have dedicated wires running to the main battery cables or the battery terminals and there should be a properly sized circuit breaker or fuse in one of the main power feed wire running to the radio/amp. If you don't have an installation manual for that radio unit, search on the internet for that manual or hook-up instructions/drawing to be certain that you are hooked-up correctly.

tonyponykay

got too busy today,

im hoping i get time tomorrow to get in there and check whats going on for sure.. maybe i left a wire hanging loose when i replaced the center console..i'm not sure .. saw a few strange things in there that didnt seem to go anywhere, they were loose when i opened it..

like the alarm relay i think is against the plate behind the shifter.. that was disconnected.. and the relay in front of the same plate. also disconnected.. duno what that relay is for yet .. lol

the line he spliced into the cig lighter ground is a black wire so I believe it is a ground wire.. but I will check to make sure... before the cig lighter had no power feed when i opened up the console. i hooked up a brand new cig lighter (i dont smoke but might need to recharge the cell phone)

and found the feed for the lighter and hooked it up. still maybe i goofed it all up somehow.. my electrical mechanical skills are 1/100 th of what they used to be years ago..

thanks for the help

tony