#9 Fuse blows, Almost hate to ask about this one. Options

[dgraves]

None of my instruments are working. Car starts and runs fine. I did only the following since everything was perfect.

1 - Replaced my flasher relay
2 - Replaced my heater blower motor relay
3 - Checked my heater lever for connectivity by pulling out of the tunnel and replacing.

When the fuse blew the first time, I didn't know it was the fuse. So naturally I started checking my dash lights by turning the knob. Nothing.

I replaced the fuse once. The gauges appeared to come on. I then noticed the fuel gauge was reading inaccurately full because before the malfunction it was accurately reading that the car was low on fuel. I turned light knob again...and pop, the fuse blew.

I have a feeling this is going to be like looking for a needle in a hay stack. Any suggestions?

[Dave_Darling]

Does the fuse still pop if you don't turn the headlight knob? If not, then your strongest suspect is the instrument illumination circuit.

I have had a few things that caused that fuse to pop. One was a body shop plugging in the license plate lights the wrong way around. There is a ground tab specifically, and it has continuity through the mounting screw threads.

Another was a fuse panel that shifted; there was only one mounting screw in it for a while and it would shift occasionally and short one of the wires plugged into the panel to the panel holder.

--DD