how do I get into the instrument panel electrical center? I've removed it from its mounds and I can rotate around to see the back. it has 3 plastic shields on it with a bolt right in the middle. but I've unscrewed the bolt as far as it seems able to go and the guard will not come off. I am having some problems with my maplights and underhood light. they are all on the same circuit. I Think I may have damaged the wiring in the electrical center by shorting that circuit. its 10A fuse I think is too much current for the size of the wire in there! I'm only getting 4.7V at the fuse when it should be 12V. I need to get this problem fixed but I can't seem to get into it.

 

I'm trying to figure our exactly what you mean... can you maybe post a picture or better description please?

 

I might try to get some picture tomorrow. right now I have no underhood light but my maplights are back working again. they are all on the same circuit fed by a 10 amp fuse. this is what I think happened. I put an LED in the underhood light to give a brighter whiter light. it couldn't fit exactly as stock because the factory bulb sits in there sideways. the LED would be shining light to the side of the light not outwards. but it came with adhesive on the back and when I stuck it to the back of the light assembly the hooks would make good contact with the original bulb mounts and make it light up. everything seemed fine until I lifted the hood the next day and the light didn't come on. I thought since the bulb wasn't making really good contact one one side that it had fallen away from the terminal my solution was to run a quick loop of wire through the loop on the bulb and around the bulb socket post. but if you look at that light, on the bottom of it you have exposed both power and ground. the bulb gets B+ from the bottom and ground from the top, but ground potential metal is exposed below the B+ terminal as well. I think I shorted the two while I was putting in the extra loop of wire to make sure it got good contact. I did blow the 10A fuse. I Was hoping that was the only problem at first. if you look at the wires which power that light, they are very small. probably 20 or 22awg. I would not trust 22awg wire 10 ft long with 10A of current. I think before the fuse blew the wiring was damaged somewhere. when I hooked it back up I was only getting 5V at the socket. I messed around with it all day and basically traced the wire damage back to the instrument panel electrical center in the passenger's footwell. it appeared as though some wiring was damaged inside the fuse box, but I could not get it apart to inspect it. as of now I'm not so sure that's the case. after putting in a new fuse and testing the relay and all of the other connections I have the interior lights working again. the underhood light does not work at all anymore. it works from the connector to the light, so the problem is with the car's wiring somewhere.

I Think what I'm going to do is to cut the factory wire off, and run a new one from B+ this way the light will no longer have the timeout feature, but it will work. I don't like the timeout feature anyway. with the LED bulb drawing 100mA and an optima yellow top I could leave that light on overnight and still start the car the next morning. (I hope!) and when I'm working under the hood using that light to illuminate the situation I always find that it turns off way too quickly. this way it will stay on as long as I need it. if I ever need to leave the hood up with the light off, I'll just unplug it, the plug is easy to get to. its not the perfect solution, if I could find and fix the damaged wire I think I would. but I traced the tiny orange wire all the way from the underhood light connector back to the instrument panel electrical center and was not able to find anything obviously wrong with it, other than it doesn't conduct electricity from one end to the other. I think that fuse is way too large for the wiring its protecting. especially with the LED lights I've put in place, I think a 2.5 or 5 amp fuse would be plenty, and much safer for the wire. when I add my new power wire I'm going to look for a 1A fuse to put on it, that's all that it will ever need. I think the smallest I have on hand is 5A, that will do for now. I plan on using bigger wires when I redo it anyway. so a days worth of research, first thing in the morning it should be a 30 minute repair.