Headlights pop fuse at battery Options

[dadaDaveed]

I finally put a battery in my 914 LS1 conversion today. Nothing blew up, nothing caught fire... a good start I think. I have the JWest fuse panel and as a precaution, I also installed a small fuse block at the battery.

Here's my dilemma. I can turn on the parking lights, but turning on the headlights immediately pops a fuse at the battery (I've gone as high as a 30 amp fuse). None of the fuses in the JWest panel have blown.

I checked the fuse panel, headlight switch, and headlight relay. All seem to be wired correctly with no visible shorts.

I currently have H4 headlights installed… for the time being the wiring is stock. A friend suggested the H4's are drawing too much current, so I tried again with the bulbs unplugged… same result.

I'm stumped. Where do I look next?

[dadaDaveed]

Yes, the battery side fuse panel has done a great job of keeping the smoke in. I'm very glad I got it. Thanks Tom!

So my mistake was to make multiple wiring changes between attempts (as I was quickly running out of fuses and patience). At the same time that I removed the starter wire from the battery, I also swapped out the headlight switch. I used a later style switch and left the 56K terminal unplugged. That was when everything started working again and I guessed it was because of the starter/alternator wiring being removed from the equation.

Last night, I double checked all the alternator, starter, and engine harness wiring and it all checked out. And with everything reconnected, the headlights were still working. So that left me scratching my head… but happy that the car was cooperating.

Then I noticed my cluster lights not working… dirty rheostat on the new switch? With only the parking lights on, I turned that rheostat back and forth to clean the contacts and eventually the cluster stayed lit. I then pulled the headlight switch and POP! Killed another fuse. Not moments before, everything was fine. Hrmmm…

So I double checked the wiring of the cluster. It's all correct. Then I realized my hi/low beams aren't switching. Perhaps a bad headlight dimmer relay. Maybe that's causing the short? I dunno, maybe not… but I swapped it out tonight and all is well again. At this moment everything is wired up and the headlights are working! The hi/low beam switch still does nothing. No click at all, so I suspect it's a bad ground or the wiring in the column. I'll check that out later.

So, I'm moving on down the checklist and hoping I've seen the last of the mysterious headlight short. Thanks for the help guys!