On a evening return trip from visiting friends, we noticed that the dashboard lights were not working (I couldn't see how fast we were going :-) I stopped to investigate and found that the tail lights weren't working either and found that the one of the four fuses was blown. It started to rain and it was also getting dark, not a good condition to drive without tail lights. We drove to a nearby gas station and parked under the dry canopy with plenty of light, a much better situation to sort out an electrical problem - we had an 100km trip ahead of us over rural roads and highways. Soon I had blown my two spare fuses but the petrol station had plenty new ones for sale, so I bought 10. With faultfinding one has to be systematic, which is not always easy when under pressure to get home, so I disconnected several connectors and tried and tried. It was clearly a fault in the light system because the fuse blew whenever I switched the lights on. The main lights and indicators were OK. I had established that the fault must be in the wiring under the dashboard somewhere. I had removed and checked the two dashboard light fittings but they looked fine, (my little torch was handy) I just couldn't find the fault without having a wiring diagram. In the meantime petrol station staff were preparing to close for the night, so I had to act quickly and looked through the shop for items that could help me getting home, and there it was: two torches and a packet of sweets in a red plastic bag....... the bags were cut to provide red lenses over the torch and presto.... two working tail lights. So my wife was positioned in the back of the Amazon pointing the two torches through the rear window, that worked really well and in the end she only switched them on whenever there appeared a vehicle behind us. And we had quite a bit of fun with it too. However while driving, we found that the brake lights were working as normal and it occurred to me that I could have just put a jumper over the two contacts on the brake switch, installed on the fire wall with good access........and have instant tail lights.

Anyway, the next morning I found the fault very quickly with the circuit diagram - it was a faulty dashboard light for the heater controls, the one I didn't check. The wire connection inside the fitting had failed and caused a short circuit (photo). These light fittings are not the best of design. Well this is a long story for just a failed light fitting, but maybe you can learn from this too. I carry a circuit diagram in my 122 from now on.

Are there any better lightfittings available to replace these ? My indicator control light is playing up too !

Regards,

Jim Hekker
VolvoAdventures.com