While I was replacing my console, I took "Baby" for a spin and found that my speedo quit and so did my radio! Whutz-Up? I checked all fuses and they're OK. What am I missing??

Is your wiring unmodified? I had a similar problem on my fiero losing half of its power accessories. It was caused by a fusible link burning out. But in my situation, the wiring was changed for the car. Not sure if a fusible link blowing would cause these symptoms in a car with unmodified wiring, but you might want to check.

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1988 Yellow Formula Fiero

And where might this fuse be??

In addition to fuses, some circuits have fusible links. Fusible links are wires of a smaller gauge than the ones they protect. This allows them to literally burn up before enough current is generated to do damage to the items they protect. So fusible links look just like a wire. They are thicker than the wires they protect because of their insulation which allows them to burn out without starting a fire. In my car, they were bright orange and were located off of the main wiring junction box next to the battery. Again, they were big thick bright orange wires. They were replaced on my car, so I am not sure if they are the same color on stock fieros.

Any how, in my car the previous owner spliced the stereo and some other extra electronics directly to one of the fusible links. When I replaced the stereo with a more powerful model, it blew the link and I lost power to the radio, cluster, and a few other items. I must have spent an hour on the fuse box until I decided to check the battery. When I went to look at the battery, I found one of the fusible links burned in two.

The repair was simple I just had to splice in another fusible link. It cost like $1.50 at the auto parts store. However, I spent a good two hours rewiring the stereo and other items to go through the fuse box properly!

So, you are looking for some thick wires which are burnt in two on the main wiring harness near the battery. Perhaps another forum member can verify what they look like when not replaced?

I hope it is something simple like this. Good luck!

OK...........Are fuseable links those wires that have thick black thick sections to them? If so....How do you check them?? I found Five,(5).

Oh and....are any of these connected to the tach and radio?? That's all I can find that dosen't work!!

If you have a multi meter, set it for 'continuity' , put one of the leads on each side of the link. If its good the meter will move to the top of the scale or beep. You can also use a reg test lite by grounding the clip on tester and sticking the probe end into the wire on the opposite side from battery. If its good lite will light up.

Hmmm... I have been looking at the wiring diagrams and can't see how just these two items wouldn't work if it was a fusible link and your wiring is the factory set-up. Here is a link to a website that contains all the wiring diagrams: http://www.euronet.nl/users/fo_elmo/wiring.htm Specifically, l was looking at the "power distribution" and "instrument panel and console" diagrams.

This may take some more detective work. It may be that you are facing two different problems that occured at the same time.

Could you provide more details of what the situation is. For example, do all the other gauges, the heater, panel lights, ash tray lights and everything else work that are on that circuit? What type of stereo is installed and how is it wired? Has there been any modifications to the wiring? Also what "exactly" were you doing when this happened?

If you can provide this info, we may be able to help you track down the problem.

[This message has been edited by ffindley (edited 02-17-2004).]

Looking at the wiring diagrams, I see that the Tach gets it's power from the 10Amp "Gages" fuse. The radio has a 10Amp fuse..."Radio", but that also powers an electronic black-box that appears to provide the VSS pulses for the Tach. So I would check with a multimeter to see if you have power downstream of the Radio fuse first. Dave