Bigman426

I have a 2003 max TE. I was changing the lights for the boss stereo lights and I was testing to see if they worked. I plugged the unit in and the last thing I connected was the antenna and due to my ignorance of electrical systems I had the power on and after some sounds of arching the lights for the stereo AND the hvac control unit shut off. The lcd display in both work, the units work as well as the radio but no back lights for the buttons! The dimmer is also acting weird too.
Im a nuts and bolts guy but understand basic electrical and after finding that no fuses were blown I'm starting to think I messed up a wire. I checked the wiring diagram and the illumination lights for the stereo and hvac are wired in parallel off of the tail lamp relay but all of the other loads shared are functioning properly.
Anyone here have this problem or may have some knowledge that could point me in the right direction so I can save myself an expensive electrical diagnosis and repair?

Bigman426

I have the schematic diagrams from the fsm.
The web link is http://boredmder.com/FSMs/Nissan/Maxima/2003/
Go to EL.pdf and the schematic for the Boss system is page 186 and the Illumination diagram is on page 87.
Please any insight is much appreciated!

DennisMik

iTrader: (2)

If the dimmer switch is "acting weird", then it probably is your problem. The electrical current for the lights has to go through it and the sparks when you shorted out the circuit probably damaged the dimmer switch.

Unplug the dimmer switch and in the wire harness connector, jumper pins 2 and 3 together. This is the black and the red/yellow stripe wires. The 3rd wire, the red/green stripe wire is 12 volts, so be sure that you don't touch that one with the jumper as it will blow a fuse.

With the jumper installed, the lights should come on at full brightness if the dimmer switch is bad.

Bigman426

Hope its as simple as that. Its hard to make sense of those schematics but I was suspect of the dimmer as well but I had a bunch of other ideas too so its nice to be able to focus on one thing. I'll dig that out tomorrow and give it a try. Deffinatly let you know how it went

Bigman426

So I did the jumper on the dimmer swich and no luck there. I'm just at a loss as to why only those two aren't working and everything else is! Any other ideas? I'm going to probe around with my multimeter to see if I can come up with anything but I'm starting to feel like this is out of my league

DennisMik

iTrader: (2)

I am at a loss here. As far as I know, the radio and the a/c controls are independent from each other. The only thing I can think of at this time would be to unplug the wire harness and see if the wire in the harness has continuity to the red/yellow stripe wire of the dimmer switch.

So do you feel up to checking wires? You would need to have a voltmeter that can measure resistance/ohms.