Batboard

I have a weird situation here, friend of mine has a 1994 carpice police package and after (or what we believe to be after) a removal of a specra remote mounted radio and a Maratrac radio with siren setup, the rear lights no longer worked...

I'll explain, the turn signals work fine, the reverse lights do not work, the emergency flashers don't work and the brake lights don't work....

When back flash is turned on, the brake and reverse lights work fine....

I checked the fuse (main panel inside car) and that certain fuse is not blown and there's no power coming to it....

I did not want to apply power to the one side of the fuse area in case I would damage something, but nevertheless, I am stumped...

I checked the other fuse panel under the hood, the max fuses or whatever they're called, all ok.

Someone else jerry rigged something to do the following:

Tapped into aux power @ the main fuse panel and bridged it into a wire bt the brake switch, so the car at least has brake lights....

I don't believe that there was or would have been any wiring interconnected with the old radios setups that would have made the rear lights cease to function, but since we don't know exactly when the lights stoppped working, we're @ a loss here.......

Someone mentioned that the fuse block was no good, but I think that they were just specualting and if that was the case we could have just cut the wire going into the rear of the fuse block for the rear lights and installed our own external fuse... (thatspecualtion was from someone who couldn't find any problem and had no clue why they don't work)

I know that this is not really a radio issue question, but since there are alot of people here who do work on p/p car instals, maybe someone has a guess????

Have you checked the brake light switch at the top of the brake pedal? I've seen where the switch can be bad and the lights go out . The turn signals are on a seprate circut. Also if this car has a tailight flasher try disconnecting that. It may be a defective flasher that is not allowing the +12 to the lights..

Just my educated guess...

Friend of mine had a 92 Police package caprice. seems theres a connector behind the dash that hooks the steering column wires to main harness. his had a connector burned in it. its a dealor only deal, but any reg. caprice has it. harness is near police acc. connector, and prob. had a spark or pulse in current burn it. dont know the particulars, but will ask him and post.

Scott

If you never figure it out ask the guys on the 9C1 Mailing list at YahooGroups.

Is it possible there was a brake light cutoff switch installed at one time and an improper detach was performed. I would look around at all the exposed wiring harnesses where radio wires would have been installed and see if someone accidentally cut some wires on a factory wire harness while detaching the police equipment. Wouldn't be the first time or last time that happened.

As far as the back up lights go, I had a 91 Caprice and unless you had the shifter all the way up while still in the reverse the back up lamps would be off. Did you check the fuse that is listed as supplying power for the back up lamps?

Going to a dealer and having them print off some copies of wiring diagrams might not be a bad idea. If they are a good dealer they will do it for free.

Jason

look at the turn signal switch connector that is mounted on steering column post. if you never worked on these cars it my be difficult for you to repair it. if you are in illinois i well be glad to help you. find the problem.