I am a new member here, just sold my Kawa KLR650 and bought a cherry 1998 Montero Sport. Has 179k on it, so things have to occur sometime and I am not particularly suspicious that it happened mere hours after I dropped $2800 USD on it.

I turned on my left turn signal and a small (but alarming) amount of smoke started coming out of the steering column near the signal stalk. It stopped after several seconds. I went into class (daytime) and hours later (night) I came out to notice that I have no dash lights. You know what that means... No tail lights either. I checked all interior fuses twice with a voltmeter, checked the blade fuses under hood. The big fuses with the view window don't have contacts on them but I think they're good.

At least we know the source of the short is from a wire in the steering column that probably failed due to the movement of the signal stalk over 12 years and 179k.

Any tips on attacking this? What colored wire to look for etc? I am about to go out and see about taking off the plastic cover. Maybe I'll be able to see the fried sucker then. Any help much appreciated!