I had a problem hooking up my fog lights and i think i blew a fuse somewhere, it drained the battery in a half and hour...the lights inside are dim.. and the radio doesnt work at all , this happened after i put everything together and hit the headlight switch..

Your owners manual will tell you exactly where to go. If you don't have one, techinfo may have the manuals posted by now. I think Will was going to post them.

Edited: 3:00 pm EST 7/30/2003:

I just checked in techinfo and didn't see them. Follow this link: http://www.bonnevilleclub.com/forum/...pic.php?t=6429

Oh poop! You are an '89. You'll have to ask 89bonnie89 to chime in.

I doubt you blew a fuse: In general, headlights use circuit breakers rather than fuses in order to avoid, say, sudden permanent darkness at 60 mph, and if a fuse _had_ blown you wouldn't be seeing a current drain anymore anyhow.

From your description I'm thinking you've left a ground connection disconnected someplace. What will happen in that case is that all circuits sharing the same bad ground connection will start operating in series (e.g. lights running at half brightness), as current in one circuit will double back through another circuit to seek a ground somewhere else.

Tell us a bit more about exactly what you did (e.g. where you were working, what you connected, etc.) and maybe something will turn up.

I did take apart the fenders to weld and fix them the bolts with the grounds i took apart , but everything worked ok when i hooked it back up. I tested the drivers side fog lamp and it worked fine.. but when i hooked the passenger side up and hit the lights on to see..the radio stopped working and wont turn on and everything went dim... I waited about a half an hour while i was in writing the post went out and now the car doesnt have enough power to start..so its draining something. the lights do come on but not at full brightness... is there someway i can get things working again like my stereo and and lights at full brightness in the process of charging battery now. should i check the grounds for all the lights... and if so where are they located.

That sounds like a major short. Check for pinched wires, bare wires, hot to ground hookup. etc.

1) Are these aftermarket foglights or are you talking about original equipment?

2) I don't suppose the problems go away if you just disconnect the passenger'* side fog lamp again?

3) Where are you drawing fog lamp power from?

Grounds for the headlamps are usually on or near the radiator support. Just follow the ground wire from any headlamp and see where it goes; it'* not far.

would that cause the radio to go out without the fuse blowing... and is there any way i can ground the wires to the chassis to make the problem go away..i just want the car back to normal.. i dont really need the foglamps..they are aftermarket also..

All _kinds_ of weird things can happen if current starts flowing the wrong way after a shared ground connection breaks. Your radio may have gone out due to its voltage dropping from 14 to 7; i.e. suddenly it'* connected in series with something else. You won't blow any fuses because you're not short-circuiting anything directly to ground.

There'* no harm in adding more connections of ground wires to chassis. That is, if you've got ground wires from your headlamps disappearing into a conduit somewhere, and you're not sure whether the hidden ground connection at the other end is really any good (and you don't have a continuity tester to verify it), there no harm in adding another connection of your own to connect the ground wire to the frame right there at the headlamps.

Just be sure, of course, that you really are grounding the _ground_ wire. In most cases, if it'* black, it'* a ground wire; if it'* not, it isn't.

Once again:

2) Do the problems go away if you just disconnect the passenger'* side fog lamp again?

3) Where are (or were) you drawing fog lamp power from?

k , now ive cleaned the grounds off by the sides of the fenders..close to the horn. Now im going to ground the headlight wires right to the chassis. , One thing i didnt think of was the main switch for the headlights inside the car..would that short if something happened that it had problems..the fog lights are getting there power from the original place... the car has a built in switch by the sunroof... i disconnected the fog light on the passenger side..and it seemed to have stopped the drain..i didnt get the car started yet..but when i put the charger on it..it didnt seem like there was any extra power going thru... but then again the battery was drained pretty low..its in the garage charging now.

Im going to try this.

1- change the headlight switch master control from my other bonneville..
2- ground all the headlight wires to the chassis .
3- ground the fog lamp wires to the chassis.

if that doesnt work where else should i look for problems.

This got a bit lengthy, so pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable...

That'* fine...

Headlamps are protected by a circuit breaker inside the headlamp switch, rather than a fuse, so that if Something Bad happens and a short occurs while you're speeding along the road, it tries to at least give you flickering light rather than instant darkness as you try to safely stop the car.

So what you're saying is that your foglamps are connected to their supply wiring behind the front bumper, right? You didn't run a new wire all the way up to the inside switch, right? (If you did, you would probably be bypassing a relay and overloading the switch.)

Well, it sounds like you've found your problem right there. Can you open up the lamp for a look-see? Perhaps its supply wire is grounding on the bulb housing, or the bulb itself has shorted.

Furthermore, if you can swap the driver'*-side and passenger'*-side foglamps, and your problem changes sides when you do so, then your problem is almost certainly in the lamp.

I really don't think your headlight switch has anything to do with this. I mean, if you have a known-good replacement available, great, but I would try this last, if all else fails.

No harm in that, but if you have a test meter available, all you really need to do is to unplug the headlamps and test to be sure that you have continuity between the ground wire in the headlamp plug and the negative terminal of your battery, which in other words would tell you that the ground wire is good. (If you don't have a test meter, you should have bought one before tackling all this. They're cheap, and even the most basic ones will be able to test for resistance or continuity, which is what you need to do here.)

Well, yes, if they're actually two-wire units; single-wire lamps are grounded through their mountings.

Incidentally, if you've got two wires coming out of your suspect foglight, the one on the passenger'* side, maybe you should check to see whether the ground wire is the one you think it is (i.e. make sure that no one'* swapped them around inside the lamp).

See above; it sounds like you might have a bad passenger'*-side foglamp and apparently a power feed to it that has no overload protection (i.e. circuit breaker or fuse), allowing a massive power drain.

Come to think of it, when your problem foglight is connected, do you even have to switch it on before your problems occur? i.e. If you keep the foglights switched off while everything else is on, do you have any problems at all?