I drove the PV544 to our local hot rod club meeting one evening, and someone told me I had no tail lights.

OK, I checked, and they were right. I fiddled with the clustered mess inside the trunk but I didn't find the problem. My flashlight was missing out of my car (naturally!) so I had to drive it home again before I could dig into the problem.

The glitch affected the parking/tail lights all around, plua the dash lights. I figured it was a fuse or a loose wire at the fuse box, where both ends of the car's wiring meet up.

No burned fuse, no loose wires. I ran my meter over everything I could reach, checking to see where that circuit went dead.

I ended up with only one fuse left in the fuse box, and everything but the tail lights and parking lights still working! GGGAAAHHH!

Today I went out and fiddled with the wiring again. I removed the light switch from the dash, and found that one wire was disconnected. I think it came loose as I was pulling th eswitch out, but I really don't know. Maybe it really was loose before.

I checked the switch terminals with my meter, and everything seems to work.

I set the switch to turn on the parking lights and went back out and checked the fuse box voltages again.

I must have fixed that problem, because I now have dash lights and parking/tail lights again.

Here's where the gremlin gets even:

When I turn on the parking lights, the OIL and AMM lights come on. The ignition isn't affected, there's no spark to start the car. Then, when I turn the inition key on, the dash lights come on and the fuel gauge registers!

Thankfully, I can safely drive the car, becasue the AMM and OIL lights work correctly when the engine starts, and as long as I have the engine running anyway, the dash lights aren't going to drain the battery.

I disconnected the battery, then measured the potential across the gap, and there's no drain on the battery when the car is shut down.

The only thing I can figure out is that somewhere deep beneath the dashboard, some rotten old strip of wire is causing a short, which is affecting the lights.

Anyone care to delve into the wiring diagram and try to firgure out how this could happen? I also need a limber younger person who can look under my dash. Maybe a big mirror and a flashlight...

*sigh*

Steve
Baron of Geymatter as usual!