Fuses keeps blowing

So last week my dad's 97 Tacoma wouldn't go into gear. We found that two of the fuses were blown, the tail light fuse and I believe the headlight fuse. I'm not sure if it is the headlight fuse though because I wasn't there when he switched the fuses. Plus we also drove the car home with the headlight on after we used the override switch. My dad replaced the fuses and everything worked fine again. The other day the fuses blew again. So I figured there must be a short somewhere and I checked the wires for the hitch connection. All of those seem fine. My dad told me earlier that the fuses seem to blow when he turns the headlights on.

So what should I check for and how do I go about checking the wires for short. Also how would I fix wires that may be shorting? I am a bit of a noob at cars.

 

i had this issue when i hooked up my trailer my tail lights would go out. it was from a short.... but idk where to start for you.. bump!

 

Fixing a short is hard as hell just to find it you'll spend countless hours tracing but fixing is easy just use some electrical tape and wrap it up good and tight

 

So basically it could just be an exposed wire? I guess I'll have to go through the wires more carefully.

 

^^ yep thats most likely all it is. a dead short to ground causing the fuses to blow. its definitly not an overcurrent issue.

 

We just encountered similar problems last night while driving home. Headlights/brake lights/interior lights were acting up. Pulled over to have a look and couldn't get the truck out of park afterwards. Thought it was a fuse so use the A/C fuse to replace the brake. Still couldn't get it to go out of park. Had to use the manual tag near the shifter to overide it.

Lost headlights for the rest of drive home. Going to try and replace all fuses tonight and hope to god its not a short somewhere. That could be painful tracking it down.

One further thing I should mention is that we got a hitch/brake controller installed over a year ago. Everything was working fine up to a few months ago. When we hooked up our trailer the controller would not show reading for the brake, but the brakes were working and so was the overide switch on the controller. The brake controller would show reading intermittantly while we were pulling. There maybe a short somewhere along that line.

Aside from fuse and wire tracking for shortages, anything else we should look for or replace??

 

Heres how to check for a short. Pull the fuse, stick one meter lead on the metal part of the block, and the other to ground with the meter on ohms. Its should say Open, if you have ohms or a signal its a short.

 

Hi BrianLV,

I'm new to this so excuse my ignorance. So if I understand this correctly, I should put one of the probes from the meter onto one of the pins from where the fuse connects too? The other probe should go to a ground on the truck? I should get a reading on the meter...if not, there is a short somewhere along that line. Is that correct?

 

first put the meter on the continuity setting and make sure the power to the vehicle is off. put the black lead to ground and the red lead to the wire you believe is shorted out. if there is a short to ground the meter will read continuity.

btw the symbol for the continuity setting on a meter is this ohm symbol