Hey All,

I've got an electrical issue with my 86 f150 flareside truck. The fuse that powers my dashboard lights, hazards, and tail lights seems to be shorting out. I tried replacing the blown fuse and as soon as I put a new fuse in, it blows instantly when pulling on the lights. I'm pretty new with working on the truck. Should I try tracing the wire that's connected to the fuse thats shorting and look for damage? Or is it an electrical problem with the fuse box? The fuse that's blowing is the 15v fuse on the bottom right of the fuse box. Would love some advise!







Henry

 

Pull the headlight switch. Check the tan/white wire. Since it blows instantly, it's not going to be anything after the switch, it will be before the switch.

From that fuse there is a tan/white wire that goes up to the headlight switch. This does not feed the headlights, that is a separate power wire that feeds a separate part of the switch. There are several parts to the switch, but there is only one ****.

The tan/white feeds the section that powers the running lights and the dash lights. This wire likes to get a loose connection and gets hot and melts the headlight connector and sometimes the wire burns up.

We just had a guy a couple of weeks ago that could not get his running lights to work, and we kept telling him to find the tan/white, and he could not find it and thought we were full of it. Finally someone noticed in a picture he took, where it was supposed to be it had burned off completely and he found it up in the harness.