11-19-2012, 12:45 AM
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John Firestone
Location: Bremerhaven, Germany
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Join Date: Sep 2003
Posts: 2,395
Mein Auto: 1996 318is
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A short to ground in the switch/instrumentation illumination wiring (58g, 0.5 GR/RT) would cause what you describe. Finding the short can be a fair amount of trouble as that wiring goes all over the place. On a positive note, your PWM dimmer control should be short circuit protected. Once you find and remove the short, everything should recover since. If you had a Z3 or Compact, you might very well have to replace or repair its light switch / rheostat. 
Do you have or can you borrow a clamp on, hall effect, DC ammeter probe? I pinched a wire to the chassis after I added electric rear vent windows, and found it in under 15 minutes with such a probe. (I can only take a third of the credit for the short.)
Last edited by johnf; 11-19-2012 at 12:53 AM.
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