electrical problem

[31beretta]

Hey guys, my 88' beretta has stirred up another problem for me. When ever I turn on any lights (blinkers, headlights, parking lights etc, except the interior roof lights) My cd player, lights, and gauges will screw up. My gauges are digital, but when this happens only the readouts go out, not the outlines and as for the cd player, that just shuts off completely. Then  everything out of nowhere comes back on and functions fine (until you try the head/parking lights again). This just started out of the blue a couple days ago. Any help or info is appreciated.


If you need more details just ask. Thanks again.

[yellow3800]

Is this light system being tasked any harder than it was designed to be?  [additional lights, etc.] If it is, I think a point of a connection has caused too much corrosion and powder has taken a once good connection and destroyed it.  It will work with low current draw, thats it.

I have found that the light switch bottom dimmer rotator thing [sliding resistor] gets either over carboned or scratched right through.  Try disconnecting the lower part of the switch and jump the wires to bypass this variable resistor.  The good thing here is that your dash, cd player and all those lights are on the same circuit.  It sounds like a loose connection on either power or ground.  I have 7 of these switches for this reason!  If you want one, holler at me.

Now the headlights would not usually go out in a case like this [only headlights would stay on, running lights and parking lights would fail].
 My next thought is to probably remove the lower left map holder black box thing in the dash to expose view to the back of the fuse box.  Follow your light fuses wires to the back.  Check for possible corrosion and maybe a wire that will turn in its seat.  Pink-Blk is power.  My guess it is one of those.  Fuse 7?  Visual indication of powder may be easiest to see.  Also, look for the slightly melted [glossy] end of wire insullation for bleeding into the wire strands.  Even if this happens, the corrosion may lie IN the wire where it can't be seen.

Keep it simple.

Andy

[31beretta]

Hey, thanks for replying man. I don't have any extra lights on it, all normal that I know of. You mean the light switch right? if so, yes, one of those would be very nice, lemme know about getting one off ya. I think the old owner switched it before cause I found a horribly corroded one in the trunk. As of looking for the wires, i'll have to wait a couple days because the car is off the road at a friends house. Now a weird thing happened the other night. I went to show a friend my stereo system, had it on low, but didnt touch any lights or anything else and after maybe 3-4 mins it all cut out like I told you.  It was weird because usually I gotta use the lights to make it cut out, but it started fine.

[rweatherford]

Be sure that your radio is not grounded to the dimming circuit.

[Decipha]

lol thats what it sounds like to me... never use the factory ground on a HU

find a bare metal spot and use it ALWAYS

[docrodg]

This could be an alternator starting to go as well.  Is it giving a good reading on the volts bar on the dash?  Problem with our 88's is that the alternators are prone to failing and when they do you lose the dash (I know, it got me on I-5 in California in the middle of nowhere).  The dimmer switch could be bad but is easy to remove disassemble and clean.  Your radio would completely shut off if wired wrong.  It chould be connected to the Yellow wire for power and the brown wire for lights.  If you wired the poser to the gray wire then it could turn off.  I doubt that the wiring is faulty as you say this just started all of a sudden (unless it was right after the radio install).

How old is the battery?  A battery on the verge of failure can suck up all the juice from the alternator leaving nothing when you hit the lights.  Check the "eye" or take it to the parts shop and have it tested before the weather gets cold, as a poor battery is sure to fail in cold weather.

[31beretta]

well I guess the first thing i'll do is check the ground and fix if needed. I know the battery isn't that great, but i'll try replacing that too. As far as charging, it never really seems to go much up past half and almost never more than 2-3 notches below the mid line, but something might be wrong there (battery wise), because one day I was listening to the radio and the reading showed only 2 notches below half and it just died right there and then outta nowhere. All was fine when I put the radio in though, it was in for 2-3 weeks before any problems happened, and this whole problem started outta nowhere while driving it one night. But I figure i'll check and if need be replace the things you guys told me so I can rule them out one by one, thanks for all the ideas/ help so far.

[docrodg]

The volts should not be below half with a good charging system.  Your battery or Alternator is going out.