Please Help! Electrial Headache!

[88 'rettaGT]

Okay, The Car is a 1988 Beretta GT v6 auto.

All my lights used to work fine, one day I was slowing down and noticed a pop sound like a fuse blew then my cluster lights and interior lights shut off.

The strange thing was that my cluster and interior lights did not work but my dome light and radio still worked!

"ok i'll just replace the fuse" I thought to myself.

I Get home check every fuse, and THEYRE ALL FINE! None Blown!

"God Dammit!" What blew? I checked relays, fuse box wires everthing i could think of, I finally gave in and bought a haynes manual, well it was no help at all.  I looked at a wiring diagram and it shows my "Dimmer Switch" as what is bad, well i go to the junkyard  put a good one in and it starts pouring out smoke as soon as i flip the dome light on!

I was pissed at this point, I tested the 4 wires at my dimmer/dome switch to see if they had power, well I accidentally touched two of the wires coming out of the dimmer , one of them was obviously a hot wire becuase i got a spark and now my cluster lights/interior lights WORK, but ONLY WHEN my dome light switch is turned ON!!!  

To top it off, they only get like half power and my dome light is really dim also like its only getting half power.



I was thinking maybe a wire somewhere with a bad ground but I am confused and lost as to what to fix!

Someone please help! any comments/suggestions would be helpful!

Thanks in advance!

[rweatherford]

I could be wrong... But this is what I remember about dome lights and dimmer lights.  Most dimmer lights are grounded and the wire that goes to them supplies the voltage.

The dome lights have both a power and ground wire.  The power is constant and the switches supply the ground connection.  Since the two systems operate differently you would not want to hook them together.