Electrical issue with marker lights + horn

[miessau0]

A little background on the situation:

This situation started roughly a year ago and I have yet to fix the problem--I have a few cars so I rarely drive the MX-3 so I havn't been motivated to fix this issue until now. The car has had projectors and HIDs for a while and I had not issues until this event started. One night I was driving home from an establishment, I heard a pop and my horn began to run... wide open. Needless to say, I had to drive home through town with my horn sounding constantly. Upon making it home, I disconnected the battery and went to bed for the night.

The first thing I did was disconnect the horn. After reconnecting the negative on the battery, the horn ceased but the marker and brake lights stayed on constantly. Upon examining the HIDs, one of the ballasts got coolant on it and the casing melted. I have since replaced the ballast and all four of the bulbs--I have projector head lights--and ballasts function properly.

So this is the situation I have been in, if I want to drive the car, it runs fine but I have to either disconnect the battery or pull a fuse because the battery will drain as the lights remain on.


Upon some investigation I have noted the following:

the marker lights stay on regardless of the position of the switch--the headlights do function as they should
the marker lights stay on regardless of which fuse is pulled except:
A) The "tail fuse" under dash and B) The "BTN" fuse under the hood
the marker lights stay on regardless of pulling each relayed located under the dash
the marker lights stay on regardless of disconnecting the plug to the switches behind the steering wheel
the steering wheel is from a later model Mazda and the horn is not connected
-the horn will still sound if connected
the marker lights stay on regardless of disconnecting any or all of the HIDs

I am not the most electrically inclined person but I have figured out some issues in the past so I'm asking for any ideas where to look for the short that I suspect.

Some notes about the car if this helps anyone help me:
-the car is a 93 RS
-the car has the battery relocated to the trunk but has no issues charing
-I have replaced the alternator in the past three years
-the car has a BP swap
-the car has a switch to run the cooling fan but on a fused circuit from the battery
-in the past, I had an issue with the cooling fan not coming on on it's own and installing a switch was the only solution I could find
-with the same issue, the high beams wouldn't function--this was prior to installing projector headlights
-the car has a 95dash swapped in
-all of the accessories work

Thank you for any ideas where to look next!

[wednesdayslatest]

WOW just WOW thats all i need to say

i havea 93 rs as well and the horn works but i cant find the wire since i had the frame work done (any way you could tell me where the horn wire leads to?)

also my issue with my market lights was a put a 40 amp fuse in my interior fuse box to the marker lights and the same as you the headlights worked the marker lights dont work. well i know the horn and the lights are on a different circuit

i have my horn on a momentary switch and the fan on a switch and my powerwindows/ dash lights

my dash lights dont work after i got the car fixed at the interior fuse box there was a plug that all the wires got fried and theyre touching THAT is the reason why your horn was constantly on because the posative and negative wires were touching and creating the circuit in the harness you need to cut open the whole harness and retrace the wire back

also for mine i got the plug to plug into the fuse box cut the end and had it re wired into the harness BUT my damn cluster doesnt light up now so im assuming its my fuse box. although the wires are connected and the marker lights work good for me the dash doesnt come on

but im telling you you need to look at the wires from the interior fuse box to make sure none of them are fried and also under the engine bay. as soon as you find the fried wires just cut and splice new wire into it. from where its still good wire on each end. im telling you for sure its a fried wire go and start putting the wires seperate thats what i did from the interior and somehow i got the wires away from eachother so it was able to work fine (still no dash) before i took it to the shop to have them replace the wire. although since they didnt fix the dash light issue im pretty pissed they told me it was the lightbulbs i spent two days removing the cluster to find out its not so i had to quick fix it so i can pass inspection still havnt got the cluster working yet but im assuming NOW i have to get the fuse box if that doesnt fix my problem then im lost myself because the harness looks okay but then again i dont have the time to rip apart the harness in the back of the cluster there so im going to try the fuse box and hopefully itll fix the issues

for a fact its the wires but you need to trace it its not HARD work its just time consuming and you need to look closely theres no way to tell where exactly the problem is you just need to check to make sure nothing is loose and nothing is making a connection where it shouldnt be (fried wires touching eachother

hope this helps you figure out your issue, the only cure is to get under that hood