Questionhi , i have a 99 neon , my internal lights for when open door/map light would not turn off it then got so hot i had to pull the wire s out of the interior mirror but now as i replace it the interior lights do not work and sum reason it has caused my radio to stop working but every thing else is fine ,dash lights ok external lights ok , any ideas ?
AnswerHi Dean,
Unfortunately I don't have a shop manual showing the wiring for your car. I have been trying to buy one at a price that is reasonable for me as a volunteer but haven't been successful yet.
When you say "it got so hot I had to pull the wires out of the interior mirror..." do you mean that the fixture got so hot just because the bulb was on all the time or because there might have been an electrical short circuit that was heating up the entire fixture? Also, what do you mean by "pull the wires out"? Did you just remove the fixture that held the bulb from the supply wires, or did you go further than that? Maybe in removing the fixture from its wires you allowed two of the wires to touch oneanother (one with 12v on it, one a ground wire) and you would then have blown a fuse in the fuse box under the dash on the driver's side of the car.
I would look at the fuse box and check the fuses that say they have anything to do with the interior lights or the radio. A fuse being blown could well explain why neither work. But you might need to also measure the resistance of the contact in the fuse socket that goes to the light fixture to be sure that its resistance isn't 0 ohms (a dead short), so you don't just blow another fuse. You would want to have a digital volt-ohm meter to make the measurements. A resistance of about one ohm is o.k. which is that of a light bulb, but a resistance of close to 0 ohms is going to blow the fuse. You would do well to take the light bulb out of the socket when you do the measurement, then it should read much higher ohms.
You might also measure the light bulb's resistance, as it could be internally shorted, which will blow the fuse. Light bulbs can do that and still light up. That may be why it got too hot.
So those are my best ideas as to what is going on. When closing the door didn't turn off the light, it meant that there was a short to ground from that light fixture. Now you need to see if it is still that way or not. Each fuse socket has one contact that measures 12V that comes from the battery, the problem would be if the other contact for that fuse measured 0 ohms resistance between it and a shiny metal surface of the body (what we call "ground" which is also attached to the - post of the battery) which would indicate a dead short so that if you then put a fuse in that socket it will blow instantly, which wastes another fuse.
Let me know what you find out. Check all the fuses, to begin with, to see which are blown, then measure the resistance of the socket contact that doesn't have 12V on it to ground. You may find fuse sockets that don't have a contact with 12v on one contact: just turn the ignition switch to "run" position and then you should get 12v on one of those two contacts of each socket. Then check the other contact (with the fuse removed of course) to make sure that it reads at least 1 ohm between it and a shiny metal surface so as to identify a shorted situation.
Good luck,
Roland
