Gauges fuse keeps blowing, windows don't work either Options

[Noahwhite2014]

OK, here is the story, the gauges fuse kept blowing and I originally thought the drivers side control unit was the culprit because I was fiddling with it a day before this issue started and my windows stopped working too,
After tearing my interior apart and finding nothing I was left pretty clueless,
Then the battery died

A friend of my mums who seemed pretty car savvy offered to come over to jump the battery and have a look at whats wrong,
He then started wrapping the fuse, WHICH I DID NOT AGREE TO, and to no surprise the fuse basically exploded and then a bunch of other things stopped working
such as dome lights and headlights

I told him to not touch the car anymore and just help me take it to an auto elec

THE CONCLUSION

I dropped the car off 10 min before closing time and it was left there over night,
The next day I got a call about 2pm saying its ready and went to pick it up

THE CULPRIT : The aftermarket antenna
When I bought the car, before the dealer gave it to me I asked for the antenna to be fixed because it was broken and dealer said OK
CLEARLY, he found the dodgiest possible person to do it because apparent from what the auto elec said the wiring was horribly done and completely bypassed everything and it caused multiple shorts inside the car and the whole wiring along the car for the antenna was FRIED



He said I'm lucky the car didn't catch on fire
The auto elec let me keep the wire he took out and this is how the whole ~2m of wire he gave me looks like this

It's been all stripped out of old antenna wires and re-wired and this time he even added FUSES!
No wonder my battery was draining

Learning lesson:
Please be careful with your wiring and make sure it's all done properly you don't end up like me and pay almost $500 to get it fixed

Well glad you're all good now at least, and safe!

When I bought my celica, it had wires running next to sharp metal edges, under fenders, etc... It even had wires of a large gauge running all the way under the carpet into the hatch and was dangling around the spare tire area. It was for an amp and sub, except the previous owner left the stripped wires near a grounding point, under a carpet.... What a lazy way to uninstall something.

Thank god I found it the day after I bought the car when I was cleaning it. Though I've still got a drain in the dome light circuit... Ugh. Can't afford to pay an auto electrician to figure out where it is, so I'm doing without a dome light till I can find it.