The map lights only work very dim for a few seconds, passengers side door wont lock, aircon temp resets itself every time I turn the Z off and the door open light is dimly lit. I was just out in the dark with a torch checking the fuses, Audio 10A fuse especially, they all seem fine. This leads to what? Btw there's no bulb in the dome light... if that matters.. 300zx and all you know..
Hi, i would be leaning towards bad earth or corroded connectors... check in the drivers and passengers foot well kick panel for ant corrosion on the connectors. a leak in the tagar roof drain can cause probs like that. best of luck...
Alex, how are you checking the fuses? Just visually? Better if you put a multimeter across them to be certain. Don't need to remove them, just check for 12V at top and bottom of each fuse in situ. Medallion Man might be right about a bad earth but I've seen and read of some funky shit happen from just one blown fuse.
The map light is an interesting one, as it's a really simple circuit. The bulbs should have battery voltage on one side at all times, and they are switched on by earthing the other side of the bulb. If you have access to the service manual, have a look at "Interior Lamp - Interior, Spot, foot and luggage Room Lamps/Wiring Diagram" Not sure what page it is on the CD version, but it's EL-40 in the hard copy manual. The map lights get their earth from "B7" and "B32". I'd be checking that you get battery voltage (ie around 12.5 volts) on on end of the map light globe contacts (probably a red with black stripe wire), and that the globe lights up brightly if you earther the other side (probably a black wire). If you do have battery voltage and the lights do light up well when you earth the other side, then look at the voltage on the 'earth' side of the bulbs when they are switched on. If the voltage doesn't drop from battery voltage down to just about zero, it is most probably an earthing issue. It looks like B7 is an earth just behind the passenger side door switch on the inside of the B pillar, and B32 is an earth inside the boot, whcih you should be able to see by removing the centre trim panel on the boot. Also, the door and boot switches are all connected via diode packs (B10 and B40), which isolate the door/hatch switches from each other. If they are damaged or corroded, they may be causing some grief too. B10 will be a smallish black box rearwards of earth B7, and B10 is an even smaller box somwhere in front of teh right rear tail light. Once again, if you have access to a service manual, this info is from EL40, EL 134 and 135. Hope it helps.
Dangerous raises a good point. I assume this problem occurred recently and all the symptoms are caused from the same root fault. All these electrical parts may be getting their wired earth from the same parent earth and that may be broken. The intermittent/ poor earthing might be caused from secondary earthing to the body. If you run a black wire from a known good earth wire across to one of the problem electrical parts, you may find that everything magically recovers. This doesn't repair the possible broken earth wire, it just reroutes the earth through a good part of the wiring loom. It is a bandaid. If the problem is from a short, then the problem will spread to the other part of the wiring loom. If the problem is caused by an electrical short then you would be noticing a battery drain.
Thanks everyone. I went over the wiring with my multimetre and found a few bad points on a ground wire, fixed it up and its all good now. Some of the wiring was in terrible condition.
