Hi! I'm new here. I have been doing all the maintenance and fixing my mom's Corolla for the past few years and recently, there have been a few problems I have not been able to troubleshoot. If you guys can help me, it would be great. Here are the problems:

1. Lowbeams on the headlights wont work, relay above driverside interior footwell fusebox keeps blowing when i throw a new one in. My mom currently drives around with her highbeams on at night that I have adjusted as low as possible. I know that its shorted out. I was wondering if it would work if I just cut the ground on the headlight bulb and just grounded it onto the frame itself.

2. Connected to the headlight problem is that when you step on the brake pedal, the front corner lights light up dimly. I noticed this one night when she was parking with her lights off.

3. The rear brake lights are crazy. Some of it lights up, I have already tried to tighten and clean all the connections at the brake lights. i have also checked that the bulbs are working and not blown.

4. Trunk leaks, probably tail light gaskets.....

5. Trunk light wont turn off. I pulled the bulb for the time being.

6. Some moron installed a Clifford alarm years ago. Starting maybe about half a year ago, the siren quit working. Along with the siren, the dome light doesn't light up when the doors are open. I know that this is connected with the alarm because the alarm currently locks the doors 30 seconds after you unlock it even when the doors are open. When the alarm was beginning to quit, this was an intermittent problem and when the alarm worked correctly, there was never a problem with the dome light or the doors locking or the siren.

7. Bad gas mileage. I do realize that living in San Francisco, I cannot expect very much, but still, its a manual and it gets around 17 mpg. I have already replaced the spark plugs with NGK coppers, motor oil, did a minor tuneup, and gas treatment. Maybe the next thing i should try is to replace the spark plug wires/ distributor cap and rotor. My friend with an 88 Integra 5-speed gets around 25 mpg and he drives the car like its stolen daily. My mom drives nowhere as rough as he does.

Besides those things, the car has been great. Its easy to fit into parking spots and its pretty powerful for the 1.6L motor. Any suggestions for any of these problems would be greatly appreciated, thank you for your time!

You didn't say what year the car is, or I missed it. It almost sounds like a complete rewiring job to sort all of that out. Hmmm.

its a US 1992 Corolla sedan 5-speed DX as stated in the subtitle

Hey, wow, it just sounds like your car is getting old. I know that's really sad. My first was a 1994 Corolla, and I had it for 10 years without any real problems. My gas mileage started going down close to the end, too, though. But even then it was never lower than maybe 25. Good luck.