This morning I started out from home in my 79ZX. All was fine then my dash lights started blinking, then came the smell of the magic smoke being let out of the electrical system and soon after that no dash lights, tail lights, emergency flasher or brake lights. Turn signals, head lights and accesories are all working. As well as the gauges and lights indicating the door ajar, fuel and so on are working. Does anyone have a suggestion?

All fuses show they are okay and that really stumps me. I have voltage coming out of the switch on the connector till you turn on the lights then it goes to zero. I hope someone else has heard of this before.

 

start diggin...

What basic area did the smoke come from?

 

actually the smoke was being a smart ***... I work in an electronics design lab, but I don't do the elctronic stuff. I do design work. But the refrence to smoke is when the magic smoke comes out the item doesn't work.

There was just a flickering of the dash lights and then the faint smell of electrical shorting. I have taken apart the lowere ends of the dash and the radio as well so I can see if I can find any charcoal bits but nothing jumps out at me.

 

When you say you've got voltage coming out of the switch til you turn it on, I hope you mean voltage going into the switch. Right? If the switch is off no voltage should be coming out. If voltage is coming out of the switch when it's off then you've got a short somewhere in your switch causing current to pass through when it should be open. But if current were passing through the switch then the lights should be working. Now this might not be a short at all. It could've been too much current passing through too restricted a path and it overheated the circuit and caused it to open. A short usually happens real quick like and if something had shorted you're almost guaranteed a blown fuse or fuse link (did you check those under the hood by the way?). If you've got no blow's of either type then I'd say it just overheated. Which can happen on a lighting circuit since they draw a bit of current through these old wires. I know my headlight wiring right under the dash get so hot I cant grab the wires. And I know it's just too much resistance in the circuit. I'm just too lazy to get out there and track it down since I don't do much night driving Good luck fixing your problem and check those fuse LINKS.