ok so last night i hooked up my underglow lights. this is how i have them powered

a direct line from the battery past a 5 amp fuse past the firewall
than it splits to two toggle switches one for my interior and one for my exterior lights
for the exterior it runs to the switch but i did not ground it at the switch
it than runs out of the switch and splits one goes to the front one to the rear

here's my problem

when i had just my interior lights hooked up i had no problems
now as soon as i connect the wire to the battery my car fills up with smoke

could this be because the switch is not grounded? i know i should've grounded it but was hoping to get away without doing so just because i'm lazy and it was really really late when i did this. any corrections on my stupidity would be greatly appreciated!

Um yeah.... you should have grounded your switch. That's not something you don't do just cuz you don't feel like it. Unless you want to start some fires that is. You might have damaged the transformer on your lights as well.

Just for reference... look up Bomex03CavalierSedan.... his car burnt to the ground because of a bad ground.....

smoke usually means burning wire, burning wire is usually a positive wire that is grounding out on something. i would pull all that wire out and start over.


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you probably chaffed the wire pulling it through the firewall.



Injection is nice but id rather be BLOWN!

maybe a combination of pilz-e and sndsgood's comments, sorry whitegoose, but the power wire coming through the firewall is the same one for the interior lights and it NEVER smoked while they were hooked up, they've been hooked up for 2 years.

now as far as grounding the switch, should i try running a wire back to the battery, or just find any good piece of metal to go to?

also, guessing i should try that first instead of pulling all that freakin wire out

any other ideas, thoughts, comments, suggestions are greatly appreciated

and like i said at the beginning this is probably because of my own stupidity and trying to shortcut things...

there is a chance the switch cant handle the load



I may run 18s, but I can do your taxes in 10 seconds flat.

You said it uses the same power wire? just splits from one switch to another? if u disconect what sounds like your new splice to the new switch and hook everything up the old way is there no issues? if so your problem lies in that new wiring ciruit. You said its in the car smoke? you shure you have the switch wired right not saying you dont just wondering if your appliying power and ground and not power and acc. just some things i myself would look at. this is why i like to give my acces there own feeds.
pliz-e just asking you a ? on this grounding the switch isnt that normaly just for the light portion? all my non light switches have no ground on them, not not installed theres no spot. i may be wrong but just asking. The transformer grounds itself thats what that big hunk of metal is for the screws(if this is the gold Series).

So your switches only have two prongs for wires then? The way I understood his, he'd have to have the 3-pronged switches in order to run mulitple switches, unless it's rigger-nig spliced. Using multiple switches is usually a good time to use a ground, especially if there's a hookup available. I suppose it's not entirely necessary (kind of the same concept as a circuit breaker), but it's a good idea. I'll lean towards sndsgood's reasoning though. If any wire got stripped anywhere and it's touching metal, that'd definitely cause the problem.

yea i fully agree that its shorting to metal,, with his description it sounds like its a new splice so i was saying that would be a place to start looking since thats were new power wires start and it was fine at first.