Fuse Panel Issue

[stockk5]

Hey everyone, I am hookin up guages in my truck finally, it came with dummy lights. Anyways, tonight i was putting in my voltmeter and i put a power to the fusebox and grounded the ground at the battery.. soo then i hit the ignition on and i hear POP.. As you can see in this picture the positive from the voltmeter was a spade into one of the open ignition areas on the fuse box. What exactly popped??? Now i have NO power to ANY of those ignition sections in the fuse box.

I thought maybe it is just the ground so i double checked it and put the spade into the brown accessory strip and again POP... now no power to that strip in any 3 of them and that brown wire thats factory and plugged in. What is that too?


EDIT this is a 1987 K5 TBI 350

thanks for any help guys

 

[mudbuggy]

that pop you heard was a fuse, the louder they are the larger they are!

 

[stockk5]

but i didnt have the spade plugged into a fused area. it was in the upper areas w/ no fuses.

Once the popped happened there was no longer power in any of the Ignition plugs up top and then same with any accessory ones.

these areas no longer have power

 

[mudbuggy]

but if it was 'downwind' of a fuse and it overloaded the fuse, it will blow or pop it! Doesn't mean it was in that panel, could be under the hood too. Do you only have the one fuse panel?

 

[bp71k5]

A lot of times this acc spades are unfused. So if something popped, it may have been a fusible link on the junction block in the engine compartment. But fix the short first.

 

[stockk5]

A lot of times this acc spades are unfused. So if something popped, it may have been a fusible link on the junction block in the engine compartment. But fix the short first.

Hmm I will have to check in the engine bay i didnt think there was even any fuse's in there.. or fusable link near the firewall. I definitly am not hooking up the voltmeter to the fuse box anymore.. I just wanna know how the hell to fix the power to the fuse box again on those circled area's as well as what that brown stock plug actually goes to. Thanks for the tips guys. lets hope its just a fuseable link!

 

[stockk5]

Well I feel dumb now I realized the number 20 fuse under the whole ign row is connected and it was just that. So I fixed it! Thanks guys! I musta just been to frozen numb to think straight while outside.

 

[Fordum]

OK, now that you got that fixed, lets see how the heck you blew a fuse with a voltmeter.
They should draw next to no amps. Either you hooked to a mounting bolt instead of a terminal, or the meter is shorted.

Or its an amp meter, not a volt meter.
Amp meters are dead shorts normally.

 

[496truck]

Anyways, tonight i was putting in my voltmeter

Reading between the lines here, but I think he meant he was installing a voltage guage. If so, reread the instructions. Been a long time but IIRC when hooking up a voltage guage, the 2 wires both go to a positive source but on different sides of the voltage regulator and the circuit needs a diode or something. I could be wrong and some guages are different than others, either way it's been at least 10 years since I've looked at the wiring instructions for an a/m voltage guage.

 

[diesel4me]

Your confusing the two--a voiltmeter has 2 leads,one goes to the positive side of the battery,the other is grounded..
An Ampmeter has 2 studs on it ,but both wires on them go to the positive side of the battery--one usually is connected at the end of the positive cable at the solenoid,the other can be hooked to another positive source such as the fuse box,etc--in a way its just a "loop" ..some have a "shunt" across the two posts that prevents the needle from swinging wildly during voltage surges...