98 E-150 Instruments not working

[besibela]

Hello,

A buddy of mine is having problems with his 98 E-150.

The Dash instruments stopped working a little while ago, and we traced the problem to a blown fuse. Replaced the fuse and everything was fine for the the next 50 miles untill the fuse blew again. We swapped the fuse one more time to be sure we didn't have a bad one, but again after about 50 miles it blew.

Are there any known weak areas on the wiring harness where they tend to short to ground? Or could the problem be somewhere else????

Thanks in advance!
mat

 

[98f150base]

The easiest way to trace your problem down is try and find a repair manual or someone who could print out a wiring diagram for the instrument cluster wiring and see what all is tied to that fuse that keeps blowing and go from there. There could be more than just the cluster on that circuit. Other than that it's hard trace shorts unless they are happening consistently for example it blows the fuse by turning the key on every time. There obviously is a problem causing a higher amperage than that circuit is designed for but trying to catch it happening might be tricky. If you can get a multi meter that reads amperage try leaving it in place of the fuse and watch for the amps to go up. Be careful because if you don't disconnect when it goes up or it goes high without you seeing it it can fry the wiring but it helps to see when the problem happens then just like I said earlier see what's on that fuse circuit and unplug each component one at a time and hopefully you will find the problem. It could be a component or the wiring between the stuff on that fuse That could be a problem. Sorry for such a long response but it's not always an easy answer for wiring problems. Hope this helps