The under hood light on my 2000 recently stopped working. I have been tryingto troubleshoot it and I am stuck scratching my head now; hopefully someonehere has encountered this or is a little more electrical savvy than me.

The bulb itself checks out fine, hooked it straight up to the battery; Ieven tried a different bulb just for kicks. I confirmed the socket is getting12V power with my volt meter. Now the part that throws me for a loop, when Iplug the bulb back into the socket the voltage goes to zero. So, where does theissue lie here?

Thanks in advance...

 

I suspect that when you install the bulb, it depresses the base of the socket against the spring and somehow is creating an open circuit. Try checking the voltage to the socket and pushing the base of the socket against the spring to see if it opens up then.

 

Well, that was a good theory, but it wasn't the problem. All checked out to be good there I wiggled the socket and spring around without any changes. I further ran wires with aligator clips from the socket to my meter's test leads and confirmed 12V. Then with the test leads attached I clipped in the light bulb and it went back to 0V. See my pics...

Thanks again.

 

Then I suspect a bad ground that's good enuf to allow current to flow to the VOM but has a high resistance that prevents current to flow thru the low resistance of the bulb. IOW it appears as an open circuit when you try to pass much current thru it.

The VOM doesn't draw much current so it doesn't appear as an open.

 

I finally got some time to look into this issue further. As I was tracingthe wire back to the I/P fuse panel, I found out the 10A #2 fuse was bad. Inever initially checked it since the other lights on that circuit were stillworking along with monitored switch. I'm not sure how that's possible, but toany extent the light is once again functioning.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

 

Glad you got it fixed. Not sure how you could get 12V at the socket with a blown fuse tho.

 

Same thing happened to my 99, but also sun visor mirror lights out and courtesy lamp in glove box. Just replaced fuse under right side dash, took some time to find this fuse panel.