Electrical issue, guru's needed!

[classicauto]

OK, wehre to start on this poor thing.

A) Car was brought into the shop in the fall for a paint job.
B) Painted the car, another shop picked it up to do some tuning, then customer got it back.
C) Cust. returns car, strange electrical issue.

What happens, is if you're sitting in the car with the key off nad press the brakes, the dash lights come on. Also, some of his defi gauges would light up.

As well, if the door's open when you press the brakes, the dinger goes off (presumably it thinks I've left the lights on because there's power on the dash light circuit?)

What I've done:

Checked wiring on defi's. Found alot of problems, namely someone had tapped into the brake circuit for +12V constant, and had it on wrong side of the switch. That fixed that.

I checked over anything I removed on the car, tail lights, door sills for pinched wiring etc. I found one dual filament bulb in the tail lamps had one burnt out filament that was hanging down and touching the other inside!! BAM, thats it right!!??! No. Tried another bulb and no dice - still does it.

Any ideas on what to check on this car? I'm at my wits end!

I should mention this car has had *alot* of wiring done by various plaecs over time. I saw somethings in this FD that made myu butt pucker such as the + battery relocation wire ran through the firewall in a quickly drilled, roughed edged bare metal hole with no grommet or bulk head!! But for now, I'd like to omit the possibility of previous work causing this issue as my main focus is on what happened to it between my possesion and when the cust. got it back (which is when this started) although I do realize and have told the cust. that it's likely entirely unrelated to me.

HELP

[joff]

Originally Posted by classicauto

OK, wehre to start on this poor thing.

A) Car was brought into the shop in the fall for a paint job.
B) Painted the car, another shop picked it up to do some tuning, then customer got it back.
C) Cust. returns car, strange electrical issue.

Paint can be a good electrical insulator (esp. thick paint). If you have any ground points you had to reconnect on the chassis during painting, you may have to scruff them up good to get back in contact with the metal so electrical contact is made. Strange stuff will happen if you've got bad grounds.