tonyroc14

Hello Everyone, I purchased a 1982 150 4x4 5.0 last week. I paid 300 bucks. I bought it from my best friend. It runs great and I have been working out the electrical problems, but there is one that is stumping me right now. The instrument illumination circuit has a short somewhere. I thought it was in the kick panel right behind the switch as I got the lights to work when I removed the switched and pulled the wires out and then the fuse kept popping when I put it back together properly. But, I have yet to see any type of short at all. I am now using a wiring diagram to trace the wires so i can find which one is grounded. Pain in the ***. Are there any common failure points with this particular circuit?

Anything else I should look into? Thanks in advance

Half ton

Start checking your grounds , all grounds. i bought a 1982 f-150 4x4 5.0 two years ago. I spent the whole summer starting at the engine bay all the way to the back bumper and i found many grounds that were rusty or no contact with metal. I like DC current because it is easy to fix ground issues with time and a grinder or i used a dremmel took and a grinder tip.work your way from the instrument panel and follow the wires to a ground and unscrew it make sure the wires are still goos and dremell tool or grind fresh metal and re attach.

Just FYI: Did you know the 1982 f-150 4x4 had no recalls at all. i looked it up on line and it shows all recalls from 1976 forward and the 1982 f-150 had none !. Pretty cool !.

tonyroc14

I meant to update this!


I found the short and it was something I would have never expected.




As stated before, I could get the lights to work properly when I had the whole dash apart, including the radio (this is very important part to my solution.) So, I decided that I was just going to take everything apart again and see if they dash lights worked again, they did. After not finding any shorts in the wiring loom I decided to just install one item at a time while the lights were on to see what would cause the fuse to blow. As soon as I went to plug the antenna into the radio, the fuse popped. I thought that was very odd so I started investigating the wiring. Apparently, whoever had wired the radio before me, wired the ground into the illumination circuit. The radio was completing the ground through the antenna cable.


This truck has had some severe wiring issues.


I started at the battery, the positive terminal was completely shot and not tight at all, I replaced that and ran some new wiring over to a relay that controls a fuel pump.


I fixed the brake lights and the brake light switch and now I fixed the dash lights.


My next order of business is to re-do the grounds. Starting at the terminal and working my way through the chassis and body. Someone had cut all the grounds off of the terminal, the only ground the truck has is hooked to the engine block, so every other ground is just through contact with the block. I will ground the body and I will ground the chassis.


Then I need to search for a vacuum leak so that my HVAC controls work again as they should.


I will post pictures sometime.

Half ton

look forward to seeing since i have the same truck that would be cool to see .