New stereo perchance? Mine did the same thing when I shorted out a wire with the new stereo

Okay, exactly which fuse was that?

Yes, but it'* very rare. The filament itself has too much resistance to blow a fuse before the filament simply burns out, and none of the other hardware parts within the bulb are close enough to touch each other. More likely the bulb itself got damaged; e.g. something crushed it and pressed the two filament supports together; something like that.

So getting back to that last question: Has any work been done in the area that could be short-circuiting the dash backlighting circuit?

The dead circuit is primarily run on gray wires (aside from the printed-circuit bulbs in the gauge clusters), so look for any of that color that seem to be damaged or that have had some aftermarket repairs/work done on them.

Also, is _everything_ else in your dashboard apparently working?

I was going to guess that it was fuse #15 because recently this happened on my '93 - but in my case, the interior lights were all out too, and it blew because I was tightening a bolt on my intake and the wrench momentarily touched the bolt on the back of the alternator (the rubber boot moved out of the way when this happened). If I remember correctly, it was fuse #15.

Like someone else suggested, check all bulbs and then check the wiring. There must be a short or excessive load somewhere.

The fuse was A4 if I remember correctly says it is for interior lights but I had those ok. Everthing else works ok. It happened in heavy a heavy rainstorm and no nothing else has been done on the car latley.

Bob

If rain water got in somewhere, then that could be the cause.
Both of my Bonnies used to leak a lot (before I found and sealed the sources of the leaks) and allowed rain inside the car, and when they leaked the carpet got soaked in different areas. There are lots of wires that run along the sides of the floor pan, under the carpet, so if water got in there, for example, that could cause problems. Or if water gets inside a taillight lens it could cause a short there.

If there'* water inside the cabin, that'* where you might want to start looking.
Or maybe it might be worth a try to temporarily remove some of the light bulbs, for example the courtesy light bulbs, to open those branches of the circuit to see if that eliminates the high current draw. If it does, then you can replace each bulb one-at-a-time to see which branch of the circuit has the problem and then look more closely in that area. I've never tried this because I've never had a need to, but it might help.

Good luck.

What other electrical work has been done on the car? Radio? Remote starter? Alarm?

No electrical work has been done on this car at all. I was looking for signs of a water leak because it happened in the rain but everything is dry. Glad I still have the HUD so I still have some info at night.

Bob

Whoa, hang on a minute here; some people seem to be drifting into talking about a different circuit.

You have lost the _dash_ _backlighting_ here, right? (i.e. the red lighting behind the gauges)

Your interior lights, courtesy lights and such are still working fine, right?

Is the HUD now blazing away at full daytime brightness, or is it dropping to its dimmer settings when the car lights are on, like it'* supposed to? If you have electronic A/C controls and/or factory stereo and compass, are those also going to their dim settings when you turn the lights on?

everything else is functioning as it should. Yes we are talking about the orange back lighting of the dash.

Bob