I installed new aftermarket headlights, taillights, sidemarkers and foglights about 3 weeks ago. The headights and foglights are fitted with aftermarket HID kits. Everything has been working great until now. I went to go turn on my lights and my gauge cluster, headlights, sidemarkers and "creep lights" dont work. I keep blowing up the 10A taillight fuse on the driver's side fusebox under the hood next to the airbox. I changed it about 5 times and it blows every time. What is confusing is that the high beams work, turn signals work and if i put my foot on the brake pedal, the brake lights light up. I dont know why this is happening all of a sudden. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

did you do any "foglight rewire" mods?

 

Sounds like a fault to me....fuse is doing its job. Something somewhere in your wiring has a problem. Dont try to upgrade the fuse size either.....you could make the problem worse. Maybe one of your aftermarket kits going bad. I had HID kit in my MDX for years then oneday thing kept blowing fuse on passenger side light.......replaced fuse once....then found out it was the HID kit on the passenger side. Replaced kit and no more blown fuses!

 

Well this is what I do at work unplug one of the things that don't work put the fuse in turn it on if it blows unplug the next thing and repeat. Keep doing this untill everything that doesn't work is unplugged. Could have pinched a wire somewhere or soomething and its grounding.g out the circut

 

Yuuup.

And you have a 2002 butyouchanged the headlights

Anyways obviously, OBVIOUSLY there is a problem with something you installed. SO it's real easy, look at what you did. There's probably a wire that got pinched, or rubbed through, and is now shorting out.

It's not weird that some stuff works and some stuff doesnt. The car has a bunch of circuits. Think of the Ocean (Your battery), there are a bunch of rivers that flow from the Ocean (Circuits), these each have a Dam (Fuse).
Then there are streams from those rivers (sub-circuits), they have dam's also sometimes (more fuses). Each of these 'streams' leads to a component, in this case, your headlights, your signals, your tailights, etc.

The Marker lights, interior lights, tailights, and some other stuff are all one "river". The fuse is blown causing these to stop working.

But you still have flow to other 'rivers', ie. your high beams, signals, brake lights, etc.

Different circuits, different fuses. If there's a problem in one circuit it doesn't effect the other, this is the reason there are multiple circuits.

 

Thanks for all the feedback guys. I didnt do the foglight rewire mod because I never got around to doing it. And I will be taking the headlights out one by one and seeing if the HID kits are acting up. Ill update my situation as soon as everything works out okay.

 

Stupid question..... IF you have a 2002 (and it comes with factory HID's) why did you install aftermarket HID's?

 

Because some people like different color lights on their cars....thats all. HID bulbs come in different temp ratings and colors....some people sont like the stock color and choose aftermarket bulbs. Thats all.

 

ok, so instead of changing out the entire HID system, you can change the bulb and get an adapter to plug it back into the factory ballast.

 

Taken from the OP.

He clearly stated he changed the housings AND put HID kits in. Ebay headlights come to mind. Hence my facepalm.

 

Good analogy/explanation lol. It all makes sense when you put it in newbie terms sometimes.