Lights stay on! Drain battery! :(

[adm22]

Lights question?

Woke up this morning to discover the running lights and tail lights in my car were on. went out to look at it and found the switch was off. This may have been like this for some time as for the past week it has taken 150 minutes or so of running before the battery stops drawing a charge.

Figured I had a bad light switch as this has happened a few times in the past. Removed it to take it in for a repalcement as it is under lifetime warranty. But after doing so the lights are still on. This has me really baffled as to the cause since the one thing I thought might be responsible was not as my recollection is that all lights should go off with the switch no longer wired into the car.

Any ideas?

 

[72HCODE]

try pulling one fuse at a time from the fuse box to see if one circuit shuts down the lights.

at least that may limit where you need to look. from my memory the fuse box should not effect the running or headlights lights, because those are on a separate circuit breaker. you can also try to inspect the wiring and circuit breakers over the glove box.

inside the glove box if you look up from the floor you will see 2 screws you may need to pop out the glove box insert a about 6 screws located in the plastic inside the box, once the insert is removed you can pull the panel down from the top popping those 2 screws.

possible melted wire in engine bay. check around the battery, if you have an isolator block near the starter relay look at the wires, see if something cracked or broke and is shorting.

The body is ground so all you need is a chafed wire, rodent damage or something melted and it can complete the circuit.

you can also try pulling light bulbs one at the time from the running lights and the headlights. if you pull a connector or a bulb and the entire lighting system shutdown then you can better locate where the problem is in the wires.

another thing to note: ask yourself did you do any work on the car recently. if it involved wires or pulling connectors then you want to back trace what you did. like if you installed a radio or something.

 

[kiko619]

Now I'm not an electrical genius but... The only way those things can be on is if the key is turned so maybe something making contact there is stuck since you said that the switch has been replaced. For the mean time just remove the negative terminal on the battery to not kill your battery until someone else can give you a more plausible response. Best of luck!

 

[adm22]

I have been fussing witht electrical on the car during the week. The flakey intermitent wiper switch was not working thought it had broken like the last 2 very poor quality control on these. Discovered the wires to the plug were loose in the plug and put epoxy on them to keep them in place and that seems to have solved that problem.

Also got an 8-track installed!

Did not know of circuit breakers above glove box- just put that in this week also.

Put battery charger on battery and is it drawing 13 amps and has been doing so w/o going down for a couple hours.

 

[JimNiki]

I drained my battery once because the brake light switch was out of position and the brake lights were running all night...

Hard to tell with a car cover on! Hehe

 

[c9zx]

Try disconnecting the turn signal and emergency flasher connector, C-91. It should be on top of the steering column behind the dash panel. It is a curved 10 pin connector. It is the only place that comes to mind that is common to the front running lights and rear tail lights. It is worth a try. Good Luck.

Chuck

 

[adm22]

Ok this is a weird one. Fixed this problem but discovered that I have one that is a bit less serious, but still perplexing.

Latest fussing around with erverything noticed that the hazard flashing light had been somehow turned on. Turned it off and the problem was solved.

I have however the new problem that the emergency flashers do not really "flash". When I discovered the problem the battery was drained and the lights themselves were rather dim. Since they were not flashing I thought they were just "ON".

Now that the battery has been charged, the lights do pulsate a little bit going from bright to not real bright, but still always on. The directional signals on the dash just light up- they are LEDs so they are either on or off- no dim. So now trying to figure out why they do not go from on to off and back again. Not as big of a problem as I had before but still something that I fear may cause future problems as there is a weird electrical demon living in my car that just loves to screw things up for me.

This be a bad flasher? I have noticed while driving for the past few months that the left directional seems to not want to work about 10% of the time. Sometimes it will not go on when I turn iit on but start about 30 secs later, like when I am at a red light. The right side I have had no problems with. Figured would wait until it was a more consistent problem before trying to fix as it is very hard to fix something that is working as it should. And I have no desire just to through parts at something.

 

[midlife]

LEDs and standard flasher cans are often incompatible, as LEDs don't have the resistance incandescent bulbs have, which are required for the flasher cans. You should consider (if not done already) to use a specific LED flasher module/can.

 

[adm22]

The LEDs are only in he dash board indicators and they seemed to work before when using the directionals, I do nto recall ever using the flashers sicne I put the LEDs in dash so dont knwo how they worked then. I have the standard light bulbs on the exterior lights.

 

[JimNiki]

As a side note, I think I left my blinker bulbs as standard filament when I upgraded to LEDs years ago.This might be needed...

Also my alt light needed to be left as filament type also....

 

[adm22]

I have gagues and have notcied that the Hi beam light has not been working although it was intermottent working before the change- the dash indicators for the turn signals have worked w./o incident for more thantwo years.