Little light under hood can cause big trouble

So it seems to be my week for car trouble. Along with my TC, I have a Dodge truck and when I spotted the grease leak while doing the front brakes I thought no big deal, that is until I found out what the tool I needed to do the job and couldn't rent was going to cost. With that I decided to replace all the ball joints along with the U- joints and pay to have the axle seals done. So I order them up from Rockauto and when they came in I jack the truck up to put them on and find that… NO; I did not forget to torque the lug nuts when I did the brakes, the left front wheel bearing had gone bad. No big deal, I leave it up on the jack stands and drive the TC while I wait for Rock to ship me the part.

Now I’m driving the TC full time good weather and bad, good road and bad, it has been my dailey everywhere driver for the past three weeks and this week I have found that the small plastic vacuum line disintegrates when it gets loose from the rubber elbow and I’m not the only person here that’s had that problem this week. Then I found a never before mentioned in the forum brake problem and now I can tell you how much trouble that little light under the hood can cause when it goes bad.

It was daylight so my first noticed symptom was 12:00 displaying when I started the car at 4:30 in the afternoon and while I was resetting the clock I noticed the radio didn't work. When I got home I went to check the radio fuse and heard a clicking sound coming from the fuse panel and found the interior light circuit breaker hot enough to burn my fingers. That is a dead short and I started with the glove box to see if anything was up into the light, then the doors because wire will break where they flex and sockets sometimes break inside the doors, then to the dash light switch first, then the wire harness and last but not least the service manual wiring diagram. Yes, the light under the hood is part of the interior lighting circuit and the wire had rubbed itself raw about an inch away from where it comes through the hood liner. I unplugged the flex line to the hood and my lights and radio came back to life, when I plugged the hood back in they kept working. Where the wire was worn was within finger reach of the hole, fixing the wire means pulling the hood liner loose and I'm in no hurry to do that, the engine compartment light is now unplugged.

Twice last summer my battery went dead for no reason, this could have been the cause.