2003 Honda Accord EX. Love this car but electrical issues are plaguing me. First, I have no tail or running lights, No backup either or license plate.

I saw signs of a major rig job. I want to undo the rig job and get all the lights to work. Do they sell wiring harness kits for the tail/bu lights?

how would I go about bringing the fuse box back to its original set up. Some fuses were missing, others were in the wrong place.

is this a job I can do myself or should Ibring it to my mechanic?

 

The wire harness to the rear of the car is discontinued from Honda, so a junkyard would be your best bet for a replacement part for the whole harness. Ebay is probably another option if you could find it.

As for repair, it depends on your skills and what was done on the original wiring. Maybe post a picture of what was modified. You can get the wiring back to original, but I suspect that you'll get back to the original reason the wiring was modified in the first place.

The fuse box is pretty simple to get fuses to the right place. The cover for the fuse box should have a diagram with the correct fuses and amps. The shop manual should also have this information.

 

I cut this wire. It went to an old backup camera that they had rigged. Shall we say. The power came from the back up lights, which they then spliced into an audio cable and splice that back into the line somehow.


I believe they took the power from the rear taillight/back up lights because they never worked when I got the car and also the entire upper part of the trunk door does not work light wise

 

That is definitely a mess. My suggestion is to find where the original wires were cut and what it will take to get the car back to OEM wiring setup.

Before reattaching everything, you can do some testing with a volt meter to figure out the original problem the previous owner tried to bypass.

 

I was afraid you were gonna say that. The original cut happened from the wiring harness on the left hand tail light side. Let me see if I can get a better picture to show you, but as far as I know, which means nothing, they use the backup lights as a power source, and they cut the wire after the harness on its way to the license plate like that also does not work.

as far as multimeters go, I have seen many different types. What kind do you suggest for this level of electrical repair?

 

Any meter that can read voltage will work. There is nothing specialized in the basic testing for power and ground.

A 12V test light is also a very useful tool. The test light is more basic, but has an advantage on circuits with wiring that is not 100% broken. In other words, a volt meter can read 12V on a wire with one strand remaing, but the test light will not light up if the damaged wire can't carry current. Hope this makes sense.

Both tools are very inexpensive, so I'd recommend getting both.