Blew Fuse - Help!

Hello All...

I was putting a radio in a 1997 Ford Aspire...  To make a long story short, while testing if I had power running to the radio, I accidentally grouded the exposed wire of the ignition-switched power lead to a metal part of the car, thereby blowing a fuse somewhere.. (not in the fuse box)

I know normally it is somewhere behind the radio a few inches back on that wire, there's an inline fuse wired in there... I cant find it.. I have a meter and am getting the 12.7 or whatever on the hot lead, but nothing at all on the switched lead, and it WAS working before I blew it... I tried to follow the wire as far as I could but it's a lot of spaghetti and seems to go way up the steering column, to up near the ignition...

Can someone please help me find out where the fuse is that I blew, and how to get to it.. or.. help me find another switched-power lead somewhere I could tap into... (I do not want to have to the direct-to-battery deal where you have to remember to shut off the radio)

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

-B

Thanks for the help everyone. I checked the fuses under the hood, and they were all good. Also, nothing else in the car (that I could find) has stopped working now. (puzzling, since the same wire is split off and goes someplace else, too, where? I dont know)

So here's what I did, I opened up the steering column to get access to the wires behind the ignition, then got out my trusty volt meter. I know that the switched lead for the radio is supposed to be off when the key is "off", on when they key is "on" or "acc", but off when the key turns to "Start" to crank the engine...

I checked the wires coming out of the ignition with the meter for ones that would behave that same way. Found one, it was a nice thick guage wire so I dont think I'll blow anything, spliced into that wire.. and BINGO.. everything works perfectly as it should.

-B

Sorry to hear you couldn’t locate the problem but glad you got things working.